This British rock band is one of the most important for the sixties and seventies Real scene beasts, this quartet, with “the Kings”, laid the foundation for a purely British rock. They are also the authors of “Tommy” , a […]

One of the legends of rock and roll are the Rolling Stones. The band was shaped in April 1962 in England. It’s establishing individuals incorporate Mick Jagger (vocals), Keith Richards (guitar), Ian Stewart (piano), and Brian Jones (guitar and harmonica). […]

Everyone who grew up in the 1960’s has their own personal favorite song. The Cold War with the Soviet Union, the Civil Rights Movement, Woodstock, and the Vietnam War all occurred during this very emotional decade. Rock ‘n roll was […]

The Beatles a band whose inception happened almost 50 years ago are still very relevant to date. They started out in Liverpool, England in 1960 with members Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Pete Best and George Harrison the band made such […]

January
January – The National Committee for Modification of the Volstead Act is formed to work for the repeal of Prohibition in the United States.
January 2 – South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics.
January 3 – Albert Einstein begins doing research at the California Institute of Technology, along with astronomer Edwin Hubble.
January 4 – German pilot Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa.
January 6 – Thomas Edison submits his last patent application.
January 22 – Sir Isaac Isaacs is sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia.
January 25 – Mohandas Gandhi is again released from imprisonment in India.
January 27 – Pierre Laval forms a government in France.
January 30 – Release of the movie City Lights starring Charlie Chaplin.
February
February 3 – Hawke’s Bay earthquake: Much of the New Zealand cities of Napier and Hastings are destroyed in an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale killing 256 people.
February 4 – Soviet leader Joseph Stalin gives speech calling for rapid industrialization, arguing that only strong industrialized countries will win wars while “weak” nations are “beaten”. Stalin states : “We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.” Intensification of the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union for industrialization and collectivization of agriculture.
February 10 – Official inauguration ceremonies for New Delhi as the capital of India begin.
February 11 – National Socialist (NSDAP) and German National People’s Party (DNVP) members walk out of the German Reichstag in protest against changes in the parliament’s protocol intended to limit heckling.
February 12 – Vatican Radio first broadcasts.
February 14 – The original film version of Dracula with Bela Lugosi is released in the United States.
February 16 – Pehr Evind Svinhufvud is elected president of Finland.
February 20 – California gets the go-ahead by the United States Congress to build the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.
February 21 – Peruvian revolutionaries hijack a Ford Trimotor aeroplane and demand that the pilot drop propaganda leaflets over Lima.

February 10: New Delhi becomes India’s capital

February 21: Ford Trimotor hijacked
March
March 1 – The USS Arizona is placed back in full commission after a refit.
March 1 – Sir Oswald Mosley founds the New Party as a breakaway from the Labour Party in the United Kingdom.
March 3 – The Star-Spangled Banner is adopted as the United States’ National anthem.
March 5 – The British viceroy of India and Mohandas Gandhi sign the Gandhi–Irwin Pact.
March 7 – The new House of Representatives opens in Helsinki, Finland.
March 11 – The Ready for Labour and Defence of the USSR programme, abbreviated as GTO, is introduced in the Soviet Union.
March 17 – Nevada legalizes gambling.
March 19 – Westminster St George’s by-election in the U.K. results in the victory of the Conservative candidate Duff Cooper. The by-election has been treated virtually as a referendum on the leadership of the Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin, and Duff Cooper’s victory ends the campaign by the press barons Lord Beaverbrook and Viscount Rothermere to oust Baldwin.
March 23 – Indian revolutionary leaders Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar are hanged for conspiracy to murder in the British Raj.
March 25 – The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.
March 27 – English writer Arnold Bennett dies of typhoid in London shortly after returning from a visit to Paris, where he drank local water to prove it was safe.
March 31 – An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000 people.
April
April 1 – The Second Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet in China is launched by the Kuomintang government to destroy the Communist forces in Jiangxi province.
April 6 – The Portuguese government declares martial law in Madeira and in the Azores because of an attempted military takeover in Funchal.
April 9 – Argentinian anarchist Severino Digiovanni is executed.
April 12 – Municipal elections in Spain, which are treated as a virtual referendum on the monarchy, result in the triumph for the republican parties.
April 14 – The Second Spanish Republic is proclaimed in Madrid. Meanwhile, as a result of the victory of the Republican Left of Catalonia, Francesc Macià proclaims in Barcelona the Catalan Republic, as state of the Iberian Federation.
April 15 – The Castellammarese War ends with the assassination of Joe “The Boss” Masseria, briefly leaving Salvatore Maranzano as capo di tutti i capi (“boss of all bosses”) and undisputed ruler of the American Mafia. Maranzano is himself assassinated less than 6 months later, leading to the establishment of the Five Families.
April 17 – After the negotiations between the republican ministers of Spain and Catalonia, the Catalan Republic becomes into Generalitat of Catalonia, a Catalan autonomous government inside the Spanish Republic.
April 22 – Austria, the UK, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the United States recognize the Spanish Republic.
April 25 – The automobile manufacturer Porsche is founded by Ferdinand Porsche in Stuttgart.
May

May 1: Empire State Building is completed.
May 1 – Construction of the Empire State Building is completed in New York City.
May 4 – Kemal Atatürk is re-elected president of Turkey.
May 5 – İsmet İnönü forms a new government in Turkey (7th government).
May 11 – The Creditanstalt, Austria’s largest bank, goes bankrupt, beginning the banking collapse in Central Europe that causes a worldwide financial meltdown.
May 13 – Paul Doumer is elected president of France.
May 14 – Ådalen shootings: Five people are killed in Ådalen, Sweden, when soldiers open fire on an unarmed trade union demonstration.
May 15
The Chinese Communists inflict a sharp defeat on the Kuomintang forces.
Pope Pius XI issues the encyclical Quadragesimo anno on the “reconstruction of the social order”.
May 31 – The Second Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet ends in defeat of the Kuomintang.
June
June 3 – Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory is put on display for the first time in Paris at the Galerie Pierre Colle.
June 5 – German Chancellor Dr. Heinrich Brüning visits London, where he warns the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald that the collapse of the Austrian banking system, caused by the bankruptcy of the Creditanstalt, has left the entire German banking system on the verge of collapse.
June 12 – English cricketer Charlie Parker equals J. T. Hearne’s record for the earliest date to reach 100 wickets.
June 14 – Saint-Philibert disaster: the overloaded pleasure craft Saint-Philibert, carrying trippers home to Nantes from the Île de Noirmoutier, sinks at the mouth of the river Loire in France; over 450 drown.
June 19
In an attempt to stop the banking crisis in Central Europe from causing a worldwide financial meltdown, U.S. President Herbert Hoover issues the Hoover Moratorium.
The Geneva Convention (1929) relative to the treatment of prisoners of war enters into force.
June 23–July 1 – Wiley Post and Harold Gatty accomplish the first round-the-world flight in a single-engine plane, flying eastabout from Roosevelt Field, New York, in 8 days, 15 hours, 51 minutes.
July
July – John Haven Emerson of Cambridge, Massachusetts perfects his negative pressure ventilator (“iron lung”) just in time for the growing polio epidemic.
July 1 – Rebuilt Milano Centrale railway station officially opens in Italy.
July 9 – Irish racing driver Kaye Don breaks the world water speed record at Lake Garda, Italy.
July 13 – Royal soldiers shoot and kill 22 people demonstrating against the Maharaja Hari Singh of the Indian princely state of Kashmir and Jammu.
July 16 – Emperor Haile Selassie signs the first constitution of Ethiopia.
July 26 – The millennialist Bible Student movement adopts the name Jehovah’s Witnesses at a meeting in Columbus, Ohio.
July 31 – The May Report in the United Kingdom recommends extensive cuts to government expenditure. This produces a political crisis as many members of the Labour Party (at this time in government) object to the proposals.
August
The 1931 China floods reach their peak in possibly the deadliest natural disaster yet recorded.
Warner Brothers releases the first Merrie Melodies cartoon, Lady, Play Your Mandolin.
August 9 – Referendum in Prussia for dissolving the Landtag ends with the “yes” side winning 37% of the vote, which is insufficient for calling the early elections. The elections are intended to remove the Social Democratic Party (SPD) government of Otto Braun, which is one of the strongest forces for democracy in Germany. Supporting the “yes” side were the NSDAP, the DNVP and the Communist Party (KPD) while supporting the “no” side were the SPD and Zentrum.
August 11 – Run on the British pound leads to political and economic crisis in Britain.
August 24 – The Labour Government of Ramsay MacDonald resigns in Britain, replaced by a National Government of people drawn from all parties, also under MacDonald.
September

September 18: The Mukden Incident: Incident Museum in Shenyang
September 5 – John Thomson, Scottish football player, dies as the result of an accident during a Celtic–Rangers match.
September 7 – Second Round Table Conference on the constitutional future of India opens in London. Mahatma Gandhi represents the Indian National Congress.
September 10 – The worst hurricane in British Honduras history kills an estimated 1,500.
September 15 – Invergordon Mutiny: Strikes are called in the British Royal Navy due to decreased pay.
September 16 – Hanging of resistance leader Omar Mukhtar in Italian Libya.
September 18
Japanese military stage the Mukden Incident as a pretext for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
Geli Raubal commits suicide in her uncle Adolf Hitler’s apartment.
September 20 – With a gun literally pointed to his head the Chinese commander of Kirin province announces the annexation of that territory to Japan.
September 22 – The United Kingdom abandons the gold standard.
October
October – The Caltech Department of Physics faculty and graduate students meet with Albert Einstein as a guest.
October 4 – Dick Tracy, the comic strip detective character created by cartoonist Chester Gould, makes his debut appearance in the Detroit Mirror newspaper.
October 5 – American aviators Clyde Edward Pangborn and Hugh Herndon, Jr., complete the first non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean, from Misawa, Japan, to East Wenatchee, Washington, in 41½ hours.
October 11 – Rally in Bad Harzburg, Germany leads to the Harzburg Front being founded, uniting the NSDAP, the DNVP, the Stahlhelm and various other right-wing fractions.
October 17
American gangster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion in Chicago.
Leeds Bradford International Airport is opened as Leeds and Bradford Municipal Aerodrome in England.
October 24 – The George Washington Bridge across the Hudson River in the United States is dedicated; it opens to traffic the following day. At 3,500 feet (1,100 m), it nearly doubles the previous record for the longest main span in the world.
October 27 – United Kingdom general election results in the victory of the National Government and the defeat of Labour Party in the country’s greatest ever electoral landslide.
November
November 7
The Chinese Soviet Republic is proclaimed by Mao Zedong.
Red China News Agency, a predecessor for Xinhua News Agency, officially founded and news wire service start in Ruijin, Jiangxi Province, China.
November 8
French police launch a large-scale raid against Corsican bandits.
The Panama Canal is closed for a couple of weeks due to damage caused by earthquakes.
Our Gang kid Darla Hood is born in Leedey, Oklahoma.
November 21 – The infamous Red-and-White Party, given by Arthur Jeffress in Maud Allan’s Regent’s Park townhouse in London, marks the end of the “Bright young things” subculture in Britain.[6]
November 25
Heavy hydrogen, later named deuterium, is discovered by chemist Harold Clayton Urey.
Ali Fethi Okyar forms a new government in Turkey (third government).
Release of James Whale’s film of Frankenstein in New York.
December
December 5 – Original Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow (1883) is dynamited by order of Joseph Stalin.
December 8 – Carl Friedrich Goerdeler is appointed Reich Price Commissioner in Germany to enforce the deflationary policies of the Brüning government.
December 9 – The Spanish Constituent Cortes approves the Spanish Constitution of 1931, effectively establishing the Second Spanish Republic.
December 10
Jane Addams became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Niceto Alcalá-Zamora is elected president of the Spanish Republic.
December 11 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom enacts the Statute of Westminster, which establishes a status of legislative equality between the self-governing dominions of the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of Canada, the Irish Free State, Newfoundland, the Dominion of New Zealand and the Union of South Africa.
December 13 – Wakatsuki Reijirō resigns as Prime Minister of Japan.
December 26 – Phi Iota Alpha, the oldest surviving Latino fraternity, is founded in the United States.
Date unknown Edit
Ust-Abakanskoye becomes Abakan.
Births

January
January 6 The first diesel engine automobile trip is completed (Indianapolis, Indiana, to New York City) by Clessie Cummins, founder of the Cummins Motor Co..
An early literary character licensing agreement is signed by A. A. Milne, granting Stephen Slesinger U.S. and Canadian merchandising rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh works.
January 13 – The Mickey Mouse comic strip makes its first appearance.
January 15 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. This is the closest moon distance at 356,397 km in recent memory and the next one will be on January 1, 2257 at 356,371 km.
January 26 – The Indian National Congress declares this date as Independence Day or as the day for Poorna Swaraj (Complete Independence).
January 28 – The first patent for a field-effect transistor is granted in the United States to Julius Edgar Lilienfeld.
January 30 – Pavel Molchanov launches a radiosonde from Pavlovsk in the Soviet Union.
January 31 – The 3M company markets Scotch Tape, invented by Richard Gurley Drew, in the United States.
February
February 2 – The Communist Party of Vietnam is established.
February 10 – The Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng launch the Yên Bái mutiny in the hope of ending French colonial rule in Vietnam.
February 18
While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh confirms the existence of Pluto, a celestial body considered a planet until redefined as a dwarf planet in 2006.
Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft, and also the first cow to be milked in an aeroplane.
March

Mahatma Gandhi
March 2 – Mahatma Gandhi informs the British viceroy of India that civil disobedience will begin the following week.
March 5 – Danish painter Einar Wegener begins sex reassignment surgery in Germany and takes the name Lili Elbe.
March 6 – International Unemployment Day.
The first frozen foods of Clarence Birdseye go on sale in Springfield, Massachusetts.
March 12 – Mahatma Gandhi sets off on a 200-mile protest march towards the sea with 78 followers to protest at the British monopoly on salt; more will join them during the Salt March that ends on April 5.
March 28 – The government of Turkey requests the international community to adopt Istanbul and Ankara as the official names for Constantinople and Angora.
March 29 – Heinrich Brüning is appointed Chancellor of Germany.
March 31 – The Motion Picture Production Code (“Hays Code”) is instituted in the United States, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in films for the next 40 years.

April

I’m xApril 4 – The Communist Party of Panama is founded.
April 5 – In an act of civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi breaks the Salt laws of British India by making salt by the sea at the end of the Salt March.
April 6
International Left Opposition (ILO) is founded in Paris, France.
Hostess Twinkies are invented.
April 17 – Neoprene is invented by DuPont.
April 18
The Chittagong Rebellion begins in India with the Chittagong armoury raid.
BBC Radio from London reports on this day that “There is no news”.
April 19 – Warner Bros. in the United States release their first cartoon series called Looney Tunes which runs until 1969.
April 21
A fire in the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus kills 320 people.
The Turkestan–Siberia Railway is completed.
April 22 – The United Kingdom, Japan and the United States sign the London Naval Treaty to regulate submarine warfare and limit naval shipbuilding.
April 28 – The first night game in organized baseball history takes place in Independence, Kansas.
May

May 5 – Mahatma Gandhi is re-arrested.
May 6 – The 7.1 Mw Salmas earthquake shakes northwestern Iran and southeastern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). Up to three-thousand people were killed.
May 10 – The National Pan-Hellenic Council is founded in Washington, D.C..
May 15 – Nurse Ellen Church becomes the world’s first flight attendant, working on a Boeing Air Transport trimotor.
May 16 – Rafael Leónidas Trujillo is elected president of the Dominican Republic.
May 17 – French Prime Minister André Tardieu decides to withdraw the remaining French troops from the Rhineland (they depart by June 30).
May 24 – Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Australia, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).
May 30
Sergei Eisenstein arrives in California to work for Paramount Pictures; they part ways by October.
Canadian adventurer William “Red” Hill, Sr., makes a five-hour journey down the Niagara Gorge rapids.

June

June 7 – Carl Gustaf Ekman becomes the Prime Minister of Sweden for the second and final time.
June 9 – Chicago Tribune journalist Jake Lingle is shot in Chicago, Illinois. Newspapers promise $55,000 reward for information. Lingle is later found to have had contacts with organized crime.
June 14 – Bureau of Narcotics established under the United States Department of the Treasury, replacing the Narcotics Division of the Prohibition Unit.
June 17 – President of the United States Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law.
June 21 – One-year conscription comes into force in France.
July

July 4 – The dedication of George Washington’s sculpted head is held at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
July 5 – The Seventh Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops opens. This conference approves the use of birth control in limited circumstances, a move away from the Christian views on contraception expressed by the Sixth Conference a decade earlier
July 7
The Lapua Movement marches in Helsinki, Finland.
Building of the Boulder Dam (later known as the Hoover Dam) is started on the Colorado River in the United States.
July 11 – Australian cricketer Donald Bradman scores a world record 309 runs in one day, on his way to the highest individual Test innings of 334, during a Test match against England.
July 13 – The first FIFA World Cup starts: Lucien Laurent scores the first goal, for France against Mexico.
July 19 – Georges Simenon’s detective character Inspector Jules Maigret makes his first appearance in print under Simenon’s own name when the novel Pietr-le-Letton (known in English as The Strange Case of Peter the Lett) begins serialization in a French weekly magazine.[3] Simenon will eventually write 75 novels (as well as 28 short stories) featuring the pipe-smoking Paris detective.
July 21 – United States Department of Veterans Affairs established.
July 25 – Laurence Olivier marries actress Jill Esmond.
July 26 – Charles Creighton and James Hargis of Missouri begin their return journey to Los Angeles using only a reverse gear; the 11,555 km trip lasts 42 days.
July 28 – R. B. Bennett defeats William Lyon Mackenzie King in federal elections and becomes the Prime Minister of Canada.
July 29 – British airship R100 sets out for a successful 78-hour passage to Canada.
July 30
Uruguay beats Argentina 4–2 to win the first Association football FIFA World Cup final.
New York station W2XBS is put in charge of NBC broadcast engineers.
July 31 – The radio drama The Shadow airs for the first time in the United States.

August
August – The volcanic island of Anak Krakatau begins to form permanently in the Sunda Strait.
August 6 – Judge Joseph Force Crater disappears in New York City.
August 7
R. B. Bennett takes office as the eleventh Prime Minister of Canada.
Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. They are hanged; James Cameron survives. This will be the last recorded lynching of African Americans in the Northern United States.
August 9 – Cartoon character Betty Boop premieres in the animated film Dizzy Dishes.
August 12 – Turkish troops move into Persia to fight Kurdish insurgents.
August 16 – The first British Empire Games open in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
August 21 – Princess Margaret Rose is born at Glamis Castle in Scotland, younger daughter of Prince Albert, Duke of York (second son of King George V and Queen Mary, and later King George VI) and Elizabeth, Duchess of York, and sister to The Princess Elizabeth.
August 27 – A military junta takes over in Peru.

September
September 3 – A huge hurricane in the Caribbean demolishes most of the city of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
September 6 – José Félix Uriburu carries out a military coup, overthrowing Hipólito Yrigoyen, President of Argentina.
September 12 – England cricketer Wilfred Rhodes ends his 1,110-game first-class career by taking 5 for 95 for H. D. G. Leveson Gower’s XI against the Australians.
September 14 – German federal election, 1930: National Socialists win 107 seats in the German Parliament, the Reichstag (18.3% of all the votes), making them the second largest party.
September 20 – The Eastern Catholic Rite Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is formed.
September 27 – İsmet İnönü forms a new government in Turkey (6th government).
October

October – The Indochinese Communist Party is formed.
October 3 – The German Socialist Labour Party in Poland – Left founded following a split in DSAP in Łódź.
October 5 – British airship R101 crashes in France en route to India on its maiden long-range flight resulting in the loss of 48 lives.
October 8 – The Philadelphia Athletics win their second straight World Series, defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 7-1 in Game 6.
October 20 – A British White Paper demands restrictions on Jewish immigration into Mandatory Palestine.
October 24 – Brazilian Revolution of 1930: Getúlio Vargas establishes a dictatorship.
October 27 – Ratifications exchanged in London on the first London Naval Treaty signed in April modifying the Washington Naval Treaty of 1925. Its arms limitation provisions go into effect immediately, hence putting more limits on the expensive naval arms race between its five signatories (the United Kingdom, the United States, the Japanese Empire, France, and Italy.)
November

November 2 – Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia.
November 3 – Getúlio Vargas becomes president of Brazil.
November 25
An earthquake in the Izu Peninsula of Japan kills 223 people and destroys 650 buildings.
Cecil George Paine, a pathologist at the Sheffield Royal Infirmary in England, achieves the first recorded cure (of an eye infection) using penicillin.
December
December – All adult Turkish women are given the right to vote in elections.
December 2 – Great Depression: President Herbert Hoover goes before the United States Congress to ask for a $150 million public works program to help create jobs and to stimulate the American economy.
December 7 – The television station W1XAV in Boston broadcasts video and audio from the radio orchestra program The Fox Trappers. This broadcast also includes the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for the I. J. Fox Furriers company which sponsored the telecast.
December 19 – Mount Merapi volcano in central Java, Indonesia, erupts, destroying numerous villages and killing thirteen hundred people.
December 24 – In London, inventor Harry Grindell Matthews demonstrates his device to project pictures on clouds.
December 29 – Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s presidential address in Allahabad introduces the two-nation theory, outlining a vision for the creation of Pakistan.
December 31 – The Papal encyclical Casti connubii issued by Pope Pius XI stresses the sanctity of marriage, prohibits Roman Catholics from using any form of artificial birth control, and reaffirms the Catholic prohibition on abortion.
Date unknown
A “Jake paralysis” outbreak occurs in the United States resulting from adulterated Jamaica ginger sold as an alcohol substitute during Prohibition.
Bernhard Schmidt invents the Schmidt camera. The chocolate chip cookie is invented by Ruth Wakefield of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts.
The experimental television station, W9XAP, in Chicago, broadcasts the election for the United States Senate, the first time that a senatorial race, with continual tallies of the votes, is televised.
Greater Sudbury is incorporated as a city in northern Ontario.
Births

Welles directed a number of high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project in his early twenties, including an adaptation of Macbeth with an entirely African American cast, and the political musical The Cradle Will Rock. In 1937 he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented a series of productions on Broadway through 1941. Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds performed for his radio anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air. It reportedly caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was actually occurring. Although some contemporary sources claim these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to notoriety.

His first film was Citizen Kane (1941), which he co-wrote, produced, directed, and starred in as Charles Foster Kane. Welles was an outsider to the studio system and directed only 13 full-length films in his career. He struggled for creative control on his projects early on with the major film studios and later in life with a variety of independent financiers, and his films were either heavily edited or remained unreleased. His distinctive directorial style featured layered and nonlinear narrative forms, uses of lighting such as chiaroscuro, unusual camera angles, sound techniques borrowed from radio, deep focus shots, and long takes. He has been praised as “the ultimate auteur”.:6

Welles followed up Citizen Kane with critically acclaimed films including The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942 and Touch of Evil in 1958. Although these three are his most acclaimed films, critics have argued other works of his, such as The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Chimes at Midnight (1966), are underappreciated.

In 2002, Welles was voted the greatest film director of all time in two British Film Institute polls among directors and critics, and a survey of critical consensus, best-of lists, and historical retrospectives calls him the second most acclaimed director of all time (behind Alfred Hitchcock). Known for his baritone voice, Welles was an actor in radio and film, a Shakespearean stage actor, and a magician noted for presenting troop variety shows in the war years.

Early life

Welles’s birthplace in Kenosha, Wisconsin (2013)
George Orson Welles was born May 6, 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, son of Richard Head Welles (b. Richard Hodgdon Wells, November 12, 1872, near St. Joseph, Missouri; d. December 28, 1930, Chicago, Illinois):26 and Beatrice Ives Welles (b. Beatrice Lucy Ives, September 1, 1883, Springfield, Illinois; d. May 10, 1924, Chicago).:9 He was named after his paternal great-grandfather, influential Kenosha attorney Orson S. Head, and his brother George Head.:37
Despite his family’s affluence, Welles encountered hardship in childhood. His parents separated and moved to Chicago in 1919. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a popular bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic and stopped working. Welles’s mother, a pianist, played during lectures by Dudley Crafts Watson at the Art Institute of Chicago to support her son and herself; the oldest Welles boy, “Dickie,” was institutionalized at an early age because he had learning difficulties. Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital:3–5 May 10, 1924, just after Welles’s ninth birthday.:326 The Gordon String Quartet, which had made its first appearance at her home in 1921, played at Beatrice’s funeral.
After his mother’s death Welles ceased pursuing music. It was decided that he would spend the summer with the Watson family at a private art colony in Wyoming, New York, established by Lydia Avery Coonley Ward.:8 There he played and became friends with the children of the Aga Khan, including the 12-year-old Prince Aly Khan. Then, in what Welles later described as “a hectic period” in his life, he lived in a Chicago apartment with both his father and Dr. Maurice Bernstein, a Chicago physician who had been a close friend of both his parents. Welles briefly attended public school:133 before his alcoholic father left business altogether and took him along on his travels to Jamaica and the Far East. When they returned they settled in a hotel in Grand Detour, Illinois, that was owned by his father. When the hotel burned down, Welles and his father took to the road again.:9
“During the three years that Orson lived with his father, some observers wondered who took care of whom”, wrote biographer Frank Brady.:9
“In some ways, he was never really a young boy, you know,” said Roger Hill, who became Welles’s teacher and lifelong friend.:24

Orson Welles in 1926: “Cartoonist, Actor, Poet and only 10”
Welles briefly attended public school in Madison, Wisconsin, enrolled in the fourth grade.:9 On September 15, 1926, he entered the Todd Seminary for Boys,:3 an expensive independent school in Woodstock, Illinois, that his older brother, Richard Ives Welles, had attended ten years before but was expelled from for misbehavior.:48 At Todd School Welles came under the influence of Roger Hill, a teacher who was later Todd’s headmaster. Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to concentrate on subjects that interested him. Welles performed and staged theatrical experiments and productions there.
“Todd provided Welles with many valuable experiences”, wrote critic Richard France. “He was able to explore and experiment in an atmosphere of acceptance and encouragement. In addition to a theater the school’s own radio station was at his disposal.”:27 Welles’s first radio performance was on the Todd station, an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes that he also wrote.:7
On December 28, 1930, when Welles was 15, his father died of heart and kidney failure at the age of 58, alone in a hotel in Chicago. Shortly before this, Welles had announced to his father that he would stop seeing him, believing it would prompt his father to refrain from drinking. As a result, Orson felt guilty because he believed his father had drunk himself to death because of him. His father’s will left it to Orson to name his guardian. When Roger Hill declined, Welles chose Maurice Bernstein.:71–72
Following graduation from Todd in May 1931,:3 Welles was awarded a scholarship to Harvard University, while his mentor Roger Hill advocated he attend Cornell College in Iowa. Rather than enrolling, he chose travel. He studied for a few weeks at the Art Institute of Chicago:117 with Boris Anisfeld, who encouraged him to pursue painting.:18
Welles would occasionally return to Woodstock, the place he eventually named when he was asked in a 1960 interview, “Where is home?” Welles replied, “I suppose it’s Woodstock, Illinois, if it’s anywhere. I went to school there for four years. If I try to think of a home, it’s that.”

Early career (1931–1935)

Playbill for Archibald MacLeish’s Panic (March 14–15, 1935), Welles’s first starring role on the U.S. stage
After his father’s death, Welles traveled to Europe using a small portion of his inheritance. Welles said that while on a walking and painting trip through Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. The manager of Gate, Hilton Edwards, later said he had not believed him but was impressed by his brashness and an impassioned audition he gave.:134 Welles made his stage debut at the Gate Theatre on October 13, 1931, appearing in Ashley Dukes’s adaptation of Jew Suss as Duke Karl Alexander of Württemberg. He performed small supporting roles in subsequent Gate productions, and he produced and designed productions of his own in Dublin. In March 1932 Welles performed in W. Somerset Maugham’s The Circle at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre and travelled to London to find additional work in the theatre. Unable to obtain a work permit, he returned to the U.S.:327–330
Welles found his fame ephemeral and turned to a writing project at Todd School that would become the immensely successful, first entitled Everybody’s Shakespeare and subsequently, The Mercury Shakespeare. Welles traveled to North Africa while working on thousands of illustrations for the Everybody’s Shakespeare series of educational books, a series that remained in print for decades.
In 1933, Roger and Hortense Hill invited Welles to a party in Chicago, where Welles met Thornton Wilder. Wilder arranged for Welles to meet Alexander Woollcott in New York, in order that he be introduced to Katharine Cornell, who was assembling a repertory theatre company. Cornell’s husband, director Guthrie McClintic, immediately put Welles under contract and cast him in three plays.:46–49 Romeo and Juliet, The Barretts of Wimpole Street and Candida toured in repertory for 36 weeks beginning in November 1933, with the first of more than 200 performances taking place in Buffalo, New York.:330–331
In 1934, Welles got his first job on radio—on The American School of the Air—through actor-director Paul Stewart, who introduced him to director Knowles Entrikin.:331 That summer Welles staged a drama festival with the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois, inviting Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards from Dublin’s Gate Theatre to appear along with New York stage luminaries in productions including Trilby, Hamlet, The Drunkard and Tsar Paul. At the old firehouse in Woodstock he also shot his first film, an eight-minute short titled The Hearts of Age.:330–331
On November 14, 1934, Welles married Chicago socialite and actress Virginia Nicolson[17]:332 (often misspelled “Nicholson”) in a civil ceremony in New York. To appease the Nicolsons, who were furious at the couple’s elopement, a formal ceremony took place December 23, 1934, at the New Jersey mansion of the bride’s godmother. Welles wore a cutaway borrowed from his friend George Macready.:182
A revised production of Katharine Cornell’s Romeo and Juliet opened December 20, 1934, at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York.:331–332 The Broadway production brought the 19-year-old Welles (now playing Tybalt) to the notice of John Houseman, a theatrical producer who was casting the lead role in the debut production of Archibald MacLeish’s verse play, Panic.:144–158 On March 22, 1935, Welles made his debut on the CBS Radio series The March of Time, performing a scene from Panic for a news report on the stage production:70–71
By 1935 Welles was supplementing his earnings in the theater as a radio actor in Manhattan, working with many actors who would later form the core of his Mercury Theatre on programs including America’s Hour, Cavalcade of America, Columbia Workshop and The March of Time.:331–332 “Within a year of his debut Welles could claim membership in that elite band of radio actors who commanded salaries second only to the highest paid movie stars,” wrote critic Richard France.:172

Theatre (1936–1938)

* The Cradle Will Rock (1937)
Part of the Works Progress Administration, the Federal Theatre Project (1935–39) was a New Deal program to fund theatre and other live artistic performances and entertainment programs in the United States during the Great Depression. It was created as a relief measure to employ artists, writers, directors and theater workers. Under national director Hallie Flanagan it was shaped into a true national theatre that created relevant art, encouraged experimentation and innovation, and made it possible for millions of Americans to see live theatre for the first time.

Houseman (left) and Welles at a rehearsal of Horse Eats Hat (1936)
John Houseman, director of the Negro Theatre Unit in New York, invited Welles to join the Federal Theatre Project in 1935. Far from unemployed — “I was so employed I forgot how to sleep” — Welles put a large share of his $1,500-a-week radio earnings into his stage productions, bypassing administrative red tape and mounting the projects more quickly and professionally. “Roosevelt once said that I was the only operator in history who ever illegally siphoned money into a Washington project,” Welles said.:11–13
The Federal Theatre Project was the ideal environment in which Welles could develop his art. Its purpose was employment, so he was able to hire any number of artists, craftsmen and technicians, and he filled the stage with performers.:3 The company for the first production, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth with an entirely African-American cast, numbered 150. The production became known as the Voodoo Macbeth because Welles changed the setting to a mythical island suggesting the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe,:179–180 with Haitian vodou fulfilling the rôle of Scottish witchcraft.:86 The play opened April 14, 1936, at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem and was received rapturously. At 20, Welles was hailed as a prodigy. The production then made a 4,000-mile national tour:333 that included two weeks at the Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas.
Next mounted was the farce Horse Eats Hat, an adaptation by Welles and Edwin Denby of The Italian Straw Hat, an 1851 five-act farce by Eugène Marin Labiche and Marc-Michel.:114 The play was presented September 26 – December 5, 1936, at Maxine Elliott’s Theatre, New York,:334 and featured Joseph Cotten in his first starring role.[41]:34 It was followed by an adaptation of Dr. Faustus that used light as a prime unifying scenic element in a nearly black stage, presented January 8 – May 9, 1937, at Maxine Elliott’s Theatre.:335
Outside the scope of the Federal Theatre Project,:100 American composer Aaron Copland chose Welles to direct The Second Hurricane (1937), an operetta with a libretto by Edwin Denby. Presented at the Henry Street Settlement Music School in New York for the benefit of high school students, the production opened April 21, 1937, and ran its scheduled three performances.:337
In 1937, Welles rehearsed Marc Blitzstein’s political operetta, The Cradle Will Rock. It was originally scheduled to open June 16, 1937, in its first public preview. Because of severe federal cutbacks in the Works Progress projects, the show’s premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theatre was canceled. The theater was locked and guarded to prevent any government-purchased materials from being used for a commercial production of the work. In a last-minute move, Welles announced to waiting ticket-holders that the show was being transferred to the Venice, 20 blocks away. Some cast, and some crew and audience, walked the distance on foot. The union musicians refused to perform in a commercial theater for lower non-union government wages. The actors’ union stated that the production belonged to the Federal Theater Project and could not be performed outside that context without permission. Lacking the participation of the union members, The Cradle Will Rock began with Blitzstein introducing the show and playing the piano accompaniment on stage with some cast members performing from the audience. This impromptu performance was well received by its audience.
Mercury Theatre

Welles as the octogenarian Captain Shotover in the Mercury Theatre production of Heartbreak House, on the cover of Time (May 9, 1938)

Breaking with the Federal Theatre Project in 1937, Welles and Houseman founded their own repertory company, which they called the Mercury Theatre. The name was inspired by the title of the iconoclastic magazine, The American Mercury.:119–120 Welles was executive producer, and the original company included such actors as Joseph Cotten, George Coulouris, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Arlene Francis, Martin Gabel, John Hoyt, Norman Lloyd, Vincent Price, Stefan Schnabel and Hiram Sherman.
“I think he was the greatest directorial talent we’ve ever had in the [American] theater,” Lloyd said of Welles in a 2014 interview. “When you saw a Welles production, you saw the text had been affected, the staging was remarkable, the sets were unusual, music, sound, lighting, a totality of everything. We had not had such a man in our theater. He was the first and remains the greatest.”
The Mercury Theatre opened November 11, 1937, with Caesar, Welles’s modern-dress adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy Julius Caesar — streamlined into an anti-fascist tour de force that Joseph Cotten later described as “so vigorous, so contemporary that it set Broadway on its ear.”[41]:108 The set was completely open with no curtain, and the brick stage wall was painted dark red. Scene changes were achieved by lighting alone.[43]:165 On the stage was a series of risers; squares were cut into one at intervals and lights were set beneath it, pointing straight up to evoke the “cathedral of light” at the Nuremberg Rallies. “He staged it like a political melodrama that happened the night before,” said Lloyd.
Beginning January 1, 1938, Caesar was performed in repertory with The Shoemaker’s Holiday; both productions moved to the larger National Theatre. They were followed by Heartbreak House (April 29, 1938) and Danton’s Death (November 5, 1938).:344 As well as being presented in a pared-down oratorio version at the Mercury Theatre on Sunday nights in December 1937, The Cradle Will Rock was at the Windsor Theatre for 13 weeks (January 4–April 2, 1938).:340 Such was the success of the Mercury Theatre that Welles appeared on the cover of Time magazine, in full makeup as Captain Shotover in Heartbreak House, in the issue dated May 9, 1938—three days after his 23rd birthday.

Radio (1936–1940)

Orson Welles radio credits
Simultaneously with his work in the theatre, Welles worked extensively in radio as an actor, writer, director and producer, often without credit.:77 Between 1935 and 1937 he was earning as much as $2,000 a week, shuttling between radio studios at such a pace that he would arrive barely in time for a quick scan of his lines before he was on the air. While he was directing the Voodoo Macbeth Welles was dashing between Harlem and midtown Manhattan three times a day to meet his radio commitments.:172
In addition to continuing as a repertory player on The March of Time, in the fall of 1936 Welles adapted and performed Hamlet in an early two-part episode of CBS Radio’s Columbia Workshop. His performance as the announcer in the series’ April 1937 presentation of Archibald MacLeish’s verse drama The Fall of the City was an important development in his radio career:78 and made the 21-year-old Welles an overnight star.:46
In July 1937, the Mutual Network gave Welles a seven-week series to adapt Les Misérables. It was his first job as a writer-director for radio,:338 the radio debut of the Mercury Theatre, and one of Welles’s earliest and finest achievements.:160 He invented the use of narration in radio.:88
“By making himself the center of the storytelling process, Welles fostered the impression of self-adulation that was to haunt his career to his dying day,” wrote critic Andrew Sarris. “For the most part, however, Welles was singularly generous to the other members of his cast and inspired loyalty from them above and beyond the call of professionalism.”:8
That September, Mutual chose Welles to play Lamont Cranston, also known as The Shadow. He performed the role anonymously through mid-September 1938.:83
The Mercury Theatre on the Air

Welles at the press conference after “The War of the Worlds” broadcast (October 31, 1938)
After the theatrical successes of the Mercury Theatre, CBS Radio invited Orson Welles to create a summer show for 13 weeks. The series began July 11, 1938, initially titled First Person Singular, with the formula that Welles would play the lead in each show. Some months later the show was called The Mercury Theatre on the Air.:12 The weekly hour-long show presented radio plays based on classic literary works, with original music composed and conducted by Bernard Herrmann.
The Mercury Theatre’s radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells October 30, 1938, brought Welles instant fame. The combination of the news bulletin form of the performance with the between-breaks dial spinning habits of listeners was later reported to have created widespread confusion among listeners who failed to hear the introduction, although the extent of this confusion has come into question. Panic was reportedly spread among listeners who believed the fictional news reports of a Martian invasion. The myth of the result created by the combination was reported as fact around the world and disparagingly mentioned by Adolf Hitler in a public speech.
Welles’s growing fame drew Hollywood offers, lures that the independent-minded Welles resisted at first. The Mercury Theatre on the Air, which had been a sustaining show (without sponsorship) was picked up by Campbell Soup and renamed The Campbell Playhouse. The Mercury Theatre on the Air made its last broadcast on December 4, 1938, and The Campbell Playhouse began five days later.
Welles began commuting from California to New York for the two Sunday broadcasts of The Campbell Playhouse after signing a film contract with RKO Pictures in August 1939. In November 1939, production of the show moved from New York to Los Angeles.:353
After 20 shows, Campbell began to exercise more creative control and had complete control over story selection. As his contract with Campbell came to an end, Welles chose not to sign on for another season. After the broadcast of March 31, 1940, Welles and Campbell parted amicably.[20]:221–226

Hollywood (1939–1948)

RKO Radio Pictures president George Schaefer eventually offered Welles what generally is considered the greatest contract offered to a filmmaker, much less to one who was untried. Engaging him to write, produce, direct and perform in two motion pictures, the contract subordinated the studio’s financial interests to Welles’s creative control, and broke all precedent by granting Welles the right of final cut.:1–2 After signing a summary agreement with RKO on July 22, Welles signed a full-length 63-page contract August 21, 1939.:353 The agreement was bitterly resented by the Hollywood studios and persistently mocked in the trade press.:2

Citizen Kane

Welles in Citizen Kane (1941)

RKO rejected Welles’s first two movie proposals, but agreed on the third offer—Citizen Kane. Welles co-wrote, produced and directed the film, and performed the lead role. Welles conceived the project with screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who was writing radio plays for The Campbell Playhouse.:16 Mankiewicz based the original outline on the life of William Randolph Hearst, whom he knew socially and came to hate after being exiled from Hearst’s circle.:231
After agreeing on the storyline and character, Welles supplied Mankiewicz with 300 pages of notes and put him under contract to write the first draft screenplay under the supervision of John Houseman. Welles wrote his own draft,:54 then drastically condensed and rearranged both versions and added scenes of his own. The industry accused Welles of underplaying Mankiewicz’s contribution to the script, but Welles countered the attacks by saying, “At the end, naturally, I was the one making the picture, after all—who had to make the decisions. I used what I wanted of Mank’s and, rightly or wrongly, kept what I liked of my own.”:54
Welles’s project attracted some of Hollywood’s best technicians, including cinematographer Gregg Toland. For the cast, Welles primarily used actors from his Mercury Theatre. Filming Citizen Kane took ten weeks.
Hearst’s newspapers barred all reference to Citizen Kane and exerted enormous pressure on the Hollywood film community to force RKO to shelve the film.:111 RKO chief George Schaefer received a cash offer from MGM’s Louis B. Mayer and other major studio executives if he would destroy the negative and existing prints of the film.:112
While waiting for Citizen Kane to be released, Welles directed the original Broadway production of Native Son, a drama written by Paul Green and Richard Wright based on Wright’s novel. Starring Canada Lee, the show ran March 24 – June 28, 1941, at the St. James Theatre. The Mercury Production was the last time Welles and Houseman worked together.:12
Citizen Kane was given a limited release and the film received overwhelming critical praise. It was voted the best picture of 1941 by the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. The film garnered nine Academy Award nominations but won only for Best Original Screenplay, shared by Mankiewicz and Welles. Variety reported that block voting by screen extras deprived Citizen Kane of Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor (Welles), and similar prejudices were likely to have been responsible for the film receiving no technical awards.:117
The delay in the film’s release and uneven distribution contributed to mediocre results at the box office. After it ran its course theatrically, Citizen Kane was retired to the vault in 1942. In postwar France, however, the film’s reputation grew after it was seen for the first time in 1946.:117–118 In the United States, it began to be re-evaluated after it began to appear on television in 1956. That year it was also re-released theatrically,:119 and film critic Andrew Sarris described it as “the great American film” and “the work that influenced the cinema more profoundly than any American film since Birth of a Nation.” Citizen Kane is now hailed as one of the greatest films ever made.
The Magnificent Ambersons

Orson Welles at work on The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

The Magnificent Ambersons (film)
Welles’s second film for RKO was The Magnificent Ambersons, adapted by Welles from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington. Toland was not available, so Stanley Cortez was named cinematographer. The meticulous Cortez worked slowly and the film lagged behind schedule and over budget. Prior to production, Welles’s contract was renegotiated, revoking his right to control the final cut. The Magnificent Ambersons was in production October 28, 1941 – January 22, 1942.
Throughout the shooting of the film Welles was also producing a weekly half-hour radio series, The Orson Welles Show. Many of the Ambersons cast participated in the CBS Radio series, which ran September 15, 1941 – February 2, 1942.:525
Journey into Fear

Journey into Fear (1943 film)
At RKO’s request, Welles worked on an adaptation of Eric Ambler’s spy thriller, Journey into Fear, co-written with Joseph Cotten. In addition to acting in the film, Welles was the producer. Direction was credited to Norman Foster. Welles later said that they were in such a rush that the director of each scene was determined by whoever was closest to the camera.:165
Journey into Fear was in production January 6–March 12, 1942.

War work

Goodwill ambassador

Delia Garcés and Welles at an Argentine Film Critics Association awards reception for Citizen Kane (April 1942)
In late November 1941, Welles was appointed as a goodwill ambassador to Latin America by Nelson Rockefeller, U.S. Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and a principal stockholder in RKO Radio Pictures.:244 The mission of the OCIAA was cultural diplomacy, promoting hemispheric solidarity and countering the growing influence of the Axis powers in Latin America.:10–11 John Hay Whitney, head of the agency’s Motion Picture Division, was asked by the Brazilian government to produce a documentary of the annual Rio Carnival celebration taking place in early February 1942.[62]:40–41 In a telegram December 20, 1941, Whitney wrote Welles, “Personally believe you would make great contribution to hemisphere solidarity with this project.”:65
The OCIAA sponsored cultural tours to Latin America and appointed goodwill ambassadors including George Balanchine and the American Ballet, Bing Crosby, Aaron Copland, Walt Disney, John Ford and Rita Hayworth. Welles was thoroughly briefed in Washington, D.C., immediately before his departure for Brazil, and film scholar Catherine L. Benamou, a specialist in Latin American affairs, finds it “not unlikely” that he was among the goodwill ambassadors who were asked to gather intelligence for the U.S. government in addition to their cultural duties. She concludes that Welles’s acceptance of Whitney’s request was “a logical and patently patriotic choice”.:245–247
In addition to working on his ill-fated film project, It’s All True, Welles was responsible for radio programs, lectures, interviews and informal talks as part of his OCIAA-sponsored cultural mission, which was regarded as a success.:192 He spoke on topics ranging from Shakespeare to visual art at gatherings of Brazil’s elite, and his two intercontinental radio broadcasts in April 1942 were particularly intended to tell U.S. audiences that President Vargas was a partner with the Allies. Welles’s ambassadorial mission was extended to permit his travel to other nations including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay.:247–249, 328 Welles worked for more than half a year with no compensation.:41, 328:189
Welles’s own expectations for the film were modest. “It’s All True was not going to make any cinematic history, nor was it intended to,” he later said. “It was intended to be a perfectly honorable execution of my job as a goodwill ambassador, bringing entertainment to the Northern Hemisphere that showed them something about the Southern one.”:253
It’s All True

It’s All True (film)
In July 1941, Welles conceived It’s All True as an omnibus film mixing documentary and docufiction:221:27 in a project that emphasized the dignity of labor and celebrated the cultural and ethnic diversity of North America. It was to have been his third film for RKO, following Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).:109 Duke Ellington was put under contract to score a segment with the working title, “The Story of Jazz”, drawn from Louis Armstrong’s 1936 autobiography, Swing That Music.:232–233 Armstrong was cast to play himself in the brief dramatization of the history of jazz performance, from its roots to its place in American culture in the 1940s.:109 “The Story of Jazz” was to go into production in December 1941.:119–120
Mercury Productions purchased the stories for two other segments—”My Friend Bonito” and “The Captain’s Chair”—from documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty.:33, 326 Adapted by Norman Foster and John Fante, “My Friend Bonito” was the only segment of the original It’s All True to go into production.:109 Filming took place in Mexico September–December 1941, with Norman Foster directing under Welles’s supervision.:311
In December 1941, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs asked Welles to make a film in Brazil that would showcase the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro.:65 With filming of “My Friend Bonito” about two-thirds complete, Welles decided he could shift the geography of It’s All True and incorporate Flaherty’s story into an omnibus film about Latin America—supporting the Roosevelt administration’s Good Neighbor policy, which Welles strongly advocated.:41, 246 In this revised concept, “The Story of Jazz” was replaced by the story of samba, a musical form with a comparable history and one that came to fascinate Welles. He also decided to do a ripped-from-the-headlines episode about the epic voyage of four poor Brazilian fishermen, the jangadeiros, who had become national heroes. Welles later said this was the most valuable story.:158–159:15
Required to film the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro in early February 1942, Welles rushed to edit The Magnificent Ambersons and finish his acting scenes in Journey into Fear. He ended his lucrative CBS radio show:189 February 2, flew to Washington, D.C., for a briefing, and then lashed together a rough cut of Ambersons in Miami with editor Robert Wise.:369–370 Welles recorded the film’s narration the night before he left for South America: “I went to the projection room at about four in the morning, did the whole thing, and then got on the plane and off to Rio—and the end of civilization as we know it.”:115
Welles left for Brazil on February 4 and began filming in Rio February 8, 1942.:369–370 At the time it did not seem that Welles’s other film projects would be disrupted, but as film historian Catherine L. Benamou wrote, “the ambassadorial appointment would be the first in a series of turning points leading—in ‘zigs’ and ‘zags,’ rather than in a straight line—to Welles’s loss of complete directorial control over both The Magnificent Ambersons and It’s All True, the cancellation of his contract at RKO Radio Studio, the expulsion of his company Mercury Productions from the RKO lot, and, ultimately, the total suspension of It’s All True.:46
In 1942 RKO Pictures underwent major changes under new management. Nelson Rockefeller, the primary backer of the Brazil project, left its board of directors, and Welles’s principal sponsor at RKO, studio president George Schaefer, resigned. RKO took control of Ambersons and edited the film into what the studio considered a commercial format. Welles’s attempts to protect his version ultimately failed. In South America, Welles requested resources to finish It’s All True. Given a limited amount of black-and-white film stock and a silent camera, he was able to finish shooting the episode about the jangadeiros, but RKO refused to support further production on the film.
“So I was fired from RKO,” Welles later recalled. “And they made a great publicity point of the fact that I had gone to South America without a script and thrown all this money away. I never recovered from that attack.”:188 Later in 1942 when RKO Pictures began promoting its new corporate motto, “Showmanship In Place of Genius: A New Deal at RKO”,:29 Welles understood it as a reference to himself.:188

Radio (1942–43)
“Hello, suckers!” Orson the Magnificent welcomes the audience to The Mercury Wonder Show (August 1943).
Welles returned to the United States August 22, 1942, after more than six months in South America.:372 A week after his return he produced and emceed the first two hours of a seven-hour coast-to-coast War Bond drive broadcast titled I Pledge America. Airing August 29, 1942, on the Blue Network, the program was presented in cooperation with the United States Department of the Treasury, Western Union (which wired bond subscriptions free of charge) and the American Women’s Voluntary Services. Featuring 21 dance bands and a score of stage and screen and radio stars, the broadcast raised more than $10 million—more than $146 million today—for the war effort.
On October 12, 1942, Cavalcade of America presented Welles’s radio play, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, an entertaining and factual look at the legend of Christopher Columbus.
“It belongs to a period when hemispheric unity was a crucial matter and many programs were being devoted to the common heritage of the Americas,” wrote broadcasting historian Erik Barnouw. “Many such programs were being translated into Spanish and Portuguese and broadcast to Latin America, to counteract many years of successful Axis propaganda to that area. The Axis, trying to stir Latin America against Anglo-America, had constantly emphasized the differences between the two. It became the job of American radio to emphasize their common experience and essential unity.”:3
Admiral of the Ocean Sea, also known as Columbus Day, begins with the words, “Hello Americans”—the title Welles would choose for his own series five weeks later.:373
Hello Americans, a CBS Radio series broadcast November 15, 1942 – January 31, 1943, was produced, directed and hosted by Welles under the auspices of the Office of the Coordinator for Inter-American Affairs. The 30-minute weekly program promoted inter-American understanding and friendship, drawing upon the research amassed for the ill-fated film, It’s All True. The series was produced concurrently with Welles’s other CBS series, Ceiling Unlimited (November 9, 1942 – February 1, 1943), sponsored by the Lockheed-Vega Corporation. The program was conceived to glorify the aviation industry and dramatize its role in World War II. Welles’s shows were regarded as significant contributions to the war effort.:64
Throughout the war Welles worked on patriotic radio programs including Command Performance, G.I. Journal, Mail Call, Nazi Eyes on Canada, Stage Door Canteen and Treasury Star Parade.
The Mercury Wonder Show

Main article: The Mercury Wonder Show
In early 1943, the two concurrent radio series (Ceiling Unlimited, Hello Americans) that Orson Welles created for CBS to support the war effort had ended. Filming also had wrapped on the 1943 film adaptation of Jane Eyre and that fee, in addition to the income from his regular guest-star roles in radio, made it possible for Welles to fulfill a lifelong dream. He approached the War Assistance League of Southern California and proposed a show that evolved into a big-top spectacle, part circus and part magic show. He offered his services as magician and director,:40 and invested some $40,000 of his own money in an extravaganza he co-produced with his friend Joseph Cotten: The Mercury Wonder Show for Service Men. Members of the U.S. armed forces were admitted free of charge, while the general public had to pay.:26 The show entertained more than 1,000 service members each night, and proceeds went to the War Assistance League, a charity for military service personnel.
The development of the show coincided with the resolution of Welles’s oft-changing draft status in May 1943, when he was finally declared 4-F—unfit for military service—for a variety of medical reasons. “I felt guilty about the war,” Welles told biographer Barbara Leaming. “I was guilt-ridden about my civilian status.”:86 He had been publicly hounded about his patriotism since Citizen Kane, when the Hearst press began persistent inquiries about why Welles had not been drafted.:66–67
The Mercury Wonder Show ran August 3 – September 9, 1943, in an 80-by-120-foot tent located at 9000 Cahuenga Boulevard, in the heart of Hollywood.:377:26
At intermission September 7, 1943, KMPC radio interviewed audience and cast members of The Mercury Wonder Show—including Welles and Rita Hayworth, who were married earlier that day. Welles remarked that The Mercury Wonder Show had been performed for approximately 48,000 members of the U.S. armed forces.:378:129
Radio (1944–45)
Welles introduced Vice President Henry A. Wallace at a Madison Square Garden rally advocating a fourth term for President Franklin D. Roosevelt (September 21, 1944).[17]:385
The idea of doing a radio variety show occurred to Welles after his success as substitute host of four consecutive episodes (March 14 – April 4, 1943) of The Jack Benny Program, radio’s most popular show, when Benny contracted pneumonia on a performance tour of military bases.[20]:368[86] A half-hour variety show broadcast January 26 – July 19, 1944, on the Columbia Pacific Network, The Orson Welles Almanac presented sketch comedy, magic, mindreading, music and readings from classic works. Many of the shows originated on U.S. military camps, where Welles and his repertory company and guests entertained the troops with a reduced version of The Mercury Wonder Show.[45]:64[87][88] The performances of the all-star jazz group Welles brought together for the show were so popular that the band became a regular feature and was an important force in reviving interest in traditional New Orleans jazz.:85
Welles was placed on the U.S. Treasury payroll on May 15, 1944, as an expert consultant for the duration of the war, with a retainer of $1 a year. On the recommendation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau asked Welles to lead the Fifth War Loan Drive, which opened June 12 with a one-hour radio show on all four networks, broadcast from Texarkana, Texas. Including a statement by the President, the program defined the causes of the war and encouraged Americans to buy $16 billion in bonds to finance the Normandy landings and the most violent phase of World War II. Welles produced additional war loan drive broadcasts on June 14 from the Hollywood Bowl, and June 16 from Soldier Field, Chicago.:371–373 Americans purchased $20.6 billion in War Bonds during the Fifth War Loan Drive, which ended on July 8, 1944.
Welles campaigned ardently for Roosevelt in 1944. A longtime supporter and campaign speaker for FDR, he occasionally sent the president ideas and phrases that were sometimes incorporated into what Welles characterized as “less important speeches”.:372, 374 One of these ideas was the joke in what came to be called the Fala speech, Roosevelt’s nationally broadcast September 23 address to the International Teamsters Union which opened the 1944 presidential campaign.:292–293
Welles campaigned for the Roosevelt–Truman ticket almost full-time in the fall of 1944, traveling to nearly every state:373–374 to the detriment of his own health[22]:293–294 and at his own expense.:219 In addition to his radio addresses he filled in for Roosevelt, opposite Republican presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey, at The New York Herald Tribune Forum broadcast October 18 on the Blue Network.:386:292 Welles accompanied FDR to his last campaign rally, speaking at an event November 4 at Boston’s Fenway Park before 40,000 people,:294 and took part in a historic election-eve campaign broadcast November 6 on all four radio networks.:387:166–167
On November 21, 1944, Welles began his association with This Is My Best, a CBS radio series he would briefly produce, direct, write and host (March 13 – April 24, 1945). He wrote a political column called Orson Welles’ Almanac (later titled Orson Welles Today) for The New York Post January–November 1945, and advocated the continuation of FDR’s New Deal policies and his international vision, particularly the establishment of the United Nations and the cause of world peace.:84
On April 12, 1945, the day Franklin D. Roosevelt died, the Blue-ABC network marshalled its entire executive staff and national leaders to pay homage to the late president. “Among the outstanding programs which attracted wide attention was a special tribute delivered by Orson Welles”, reported Broadcasting magazine. Welles spoke at 10:10 p.m Eastern War Time, from Hollywood, and stressed the importance of continuing FDR’s work: “He has no need for homage and we who loved him have no time for tears … Our fighting sons and brothers cannot pause tonight to mark the death of him whose name will be given to the age we live in.”
Welles presented another special broadcast on the death of Roosevelt the following evening: “We must move on beyond mere death to that free world which was the hope and labor of his life.”:390:242
He dedicated the April 17 episode of This Is My Best to Roosevelt and the future of America on the eve of the United Nations Conference on International Organization.:390 Welles was an advisor and correspondent for the Blue-ABC radio network’s coverage of the San Francisco conference that formed the UN, taking place April 24 – June 23, 1945. He presented a half-hour dramatic program written by Ben Hecht on the opening day of the conference, and on Sunday afternoons (April 29 – June 10) he led a weekly discussion from the San Francisco Civic Auditorium.
The Stranger
Director and star Orson Welles at work on The Stranger (October 1945)
In the fall of 1945 Welles began work on The Stranger (1946), a film noir drama about a war crimes investigator who tracks a high-ranking Nazi fugitive to an idyllic New England town. Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Welles star.
Producer Sam Spiegel initially planned to hire director John Huston, who had rewritten the screenplay by Anthony Veiller. When Huston entered the military, Welles was given the chance to direct and prove himself able to make a film on schedule and under budget:19—something he was so eager to do that he accepted a disadvantageous contract. One of its concessions was that he would defer to the studio in any creative dispute.:379:309–310
The Stranger was Welles’s first job as a film director in four years.:391 He was told that if the film was successful he could sign a four-picture deal with International Pictures, making films of his own choosing.:379 Welles was given some degree of creative control,:19 and he endeavored to personalize the film and develop a nightmarish tone.:2:30 He worked on the general rewrite of the script and wrote scenes at the beginning of the picture that were shot but subsequently cut by the producers.:186 He filmed in long takes that largely thwarted the control given to editor Ernest J. Nims under the terms of the contract.:15:45
The Stranger was the first commercial film to use documentary footage from the Nazi concentration camps.:189 Welles had seen the footage in early May 1945:102:03 in San Francisco,:56 as a correspondent and discussion moderator at the UN Conference on International Organization.[22]:304 He wrote of the Holocaust footage in his syndicated New York Post column May 7, 1945.:56–57
Completed a day ahead of schedule and under budget,[20]:379–380 The Stranger was the only film made by Welles to have been a bona fide box office success upon its release. Its cost was $1.034 million; 15 months after its release it had grossed $3.216 million. Within weeks of the completion of the film, International Pictures backed out of its promised four-picture deal with Welles. No reason was given, but the impression was left that The Stranger would not make money.:381
Around the World

In the summer of 1946, Welles moved to New York to direct the Broadway musical Around the World, a stage adaptation of the Jules Verne novel Around the World in Eighty Days with a book by Welles and music by Cole Porter. Producer Mike Todd, who would later produce the successful 1956 film adaptation, pulled out from the lavish and expensive production, leaving Welles to support the finances. When Welles ran out of money he convinced Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn to send enough money to continue the show, and in exchange Welles promised to write, produce, direct and star in a film for Cohn for no further fee. The stage show soon failed due to poor box-office, with Welles unable to claim the losses on his taxes.
Radio (1946)

In 1946, Welles began two new radio series—The Mercury Summer Theatre on the Air for CBS, and Orson Welles Commentaries for ABC. While Mercury Summer Theatre featured half-hour adaptations of some classic Mercury radio shows from the 1930s, the first episode was a condensation of his Around the World stage play, and is the only record of Cole Porter’s music for the project. Several original Mercury actors returned for the series, as well as Bernard Herrmann. Welles invested his earnings into his failing stage play. Commentaries was a political vehicle for him, continuing the themes from his New York Post column. Again, Welles lacked a clear focus, until the NAACP brought to his attention the case of Isaac Woodard. Welles brought significant attention to Woodard’s cause.
The last broadcast of Orson Welles Commentaries on October 6, 1946, marked the end of Welles’s own radio shows.:401
The Lady from Shanghai
The film that Welles was obliged to make in exchange for Harry Cohn’s help in financing the stage production Around the World was The Lady from Shanghai, filmed in 1947 for Columbia Pictures. Intended as a modest thriller, the budget skyrocketed after Cohn suggested that Welles’s then-estranged second wife Rita Hayworth co-star.
Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
Cohn disliked Welles’s rough cut, particularly the confusing plot and lack of close-ups, and was not in sympathy with Welles’s Brechtian use of irony and black comedy, especially in a farcical courtroom scene. Cohn ordered extensive editing and re-shoots. After heavy editing by the studio, approximately one hour of Welles’s first cut was removed, including much of a climactic confrontation scene in an amusement park funhouse. While expressing displeasure at the cuts, Welles was appalled particularly with the musical score. The film was considered a disaster in America at the time of release, though the closing shootout in a hall of mirrors has since become a touchstone of film noir. Not long after release, Welles and Hayworth finalized their divorce.
Although The Lady From Shanghai was acclaimed in Europe, it was not embraced in the U.S. until decades later. A similar difference in reception on opposite sides of the Atlantic followed by greater American acceptance befell the Welles-inspired Chaplin film Monsieur Verdoux, originally to be directed by Welles starring Chaplin, then directed by Chaplin with the idea credited to Welles.

Macbeth
Prior to 1948, Welles convinced Republic Pictures to let him direct a low-budget version of Macbeth, which featured highly stylized sets and costumes, and a cast of actors lip-syncing to a pre-recorded soundtrack, one of many innovative cost-cutting techniques Welles deployed in an attempt to make an epic film from B-movie resources. The script, adapted by Welles, is a violent reworking of Shakespeare’s original, freely cutting and pasting lines into new contexts via a collage technique and recasting Macbeth as a clash of pagan and proto-Christian ideologies. Some voodoo trappings of the famous Welles/Houseman Negro Theatre stage adaptation are visible, especially in the film’s characterization of the Weird Sisters, who create an effigy of Macbeth as a charm to enchant him. Of all Welles’s post-Kane Hollywood productions, Macbeth is stylistically closest to Citizen Kane in its long takes and deep focus photography.
Republic initially trumpeted the film as an important work but decided it did not care for the Scottish accents and held up general release for almost a year after early negative press reaction, including Life’s comment that Welles’s film “doth foully slaughter Shakespeare.” Welles left for Europe, while co-producer and lifelong supporter Richard Wilson reworked the soundtrack. Welles returned and cut 20 minutes from the film at Republic’s request and recorded narration to cover some gaps. The film was decried as a disaster. Macbeth had influential fans in Europe, especially the French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, who hailed the film’s “crude, irreverent power” and careful shot design, and described the characters as haunting “the corridors of some dreamlike subway, an abandoned coal mine, and ruined cellars oozing with water.”

Europe (1948–1956)

In Italy he starred as Cagliostro in the 1948 film Black Magic. His co-star, Akim Tamiroff, impressed Welles so much that Tamiroff would appear in four of Welles’s productions during the 1950s and 1960s.
The following year, Welles starred as Harry Lime in Carol Reed’s The Third Man, alongside Joseph Cotten, his friend and co-star from Citizen Kane, with a script by Graham Greene and a memorable score by Anton Karas.
A few years later, British radio producer Harry Alan Towers would resurrect the Lime character in the radio series The Adventures of Harry Lime.
Welles appeared as Cesare Borgia in the 1949 Italian film Prince of Foxes, with Tyrone Power and Mercury Theatre alumnus Everett Sloane, and as the Mongol warrior Bayan in the 1950 film version of the novel The Black Rose (again with Tyrone Power).
Othello
During this time, Welles was channeling his money from acting jobs into a self-financed film version of Shakespeare’s play Othello. From 1949 to 1951, Welles worked on Othello, filming on location in Europe and Morocco. The film featured Welles’s friends, Micheál Mac Liammóir as Iago and Hilton Edwards as Desdemona’s father Brabantio. Suzanne Cloutier starred as Desdemona and Campbell Playhouse alumnus Robert Coote appeared as Iago’s associate Roderigo.
Filming was suspended several times as Welles ran out of funds and left for acting jobs, accounted in detail in MacLiammóir’s published memoir Put Money in Thy Purse. The American release prints had a technically flawed soundtrack, suffering from a drop-out of sound at every quiet moment. Welles’s daughter, Beatrice Welles-Smith, restored Othello in 1992 for a wide re-release. The restoration included reconstructing Angelo Francesco Lavagnino’s original musical score, which was originally inaudible, and adding ambient stereo sound effects, which were not in the original film. The restoration went on to a successful theatrical run in America.
In 1952, Welles continued finding work in England after the success of the Harry Lime radio show. Harry Alan Towers offered Welles another series, The Black Museum, which ran for 52 weeks with Welles as host and narrator. Director Herbert Wilcox offered Welles the part of the murdered victim in Trent’s Last Case, based on the novel by E. C. Bentley. In 1953, the BBC hired Welles to read an hour of selections from Walt Whitman’s epic poem Song of Myself. Towers hired Welles again, to play Professor Moriarty in the radio series, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starring John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson.
Welles briefly returned to America to make his first appearance on television, starring in the Omnibus presentation of King Lear, broadcast live on CBS October 18, 1953. Directed by Peter Brook, the production costarred Natasha Parry, Beatrice Straight and Arnold Moss.
In 1954, director George More O’Ferrall offered Welles the title role in the ‘Lord Mountdrago’ segment of Three Cases of Murder, co-starring Alan Badel. Herbert Wilcox cast Welles as the antagonist in Trouble in the Glen opposite Margaret Lockwood, Forrest Tucker and Victor McLaglen. Old friend John Huston cast him as Father Mapple in his 1956 film adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, starring Gregory Peck.
Mr. Arkadin
Welles in Madrid during the filming of Mr. Arkadin in 1954
Welles’s next turn as director was the film Mr. Arkadin (1955), which was produced by his political mentor from the 1940s, Louis Dolivet. It was filmed in France, Germany, Spain and Italy on a very limited budget. Based loosely on several episodes of the Harry Lime radio show, it stars Welles as a billionaire who hires a man to delve into the secrets of his past. The film stars Robert Arden, who had worked on the Harry Lime series; Welles’s third wife, Paola Mori, whose voice was dubbed by actress Billie Whitelaw; and guest stars Akim Tamiroff, Michael Redgrave, Katina Paxinou and Mischa Auer. Frustrated by his slow progress in the editing room, producer Dolivet removed Welles from the project and finished the film without him. Eventually five different versions of the film would be released, two in Spanish and three in English. The version that Dolivet completed was retitled Confidential Report. In 2005 Stefan Droessler of the Munich Film Museum oversaw a reconstruction of the surviving film elements.

Television projects

In 1955, Welles also directed two television series for the BBC. The first was Orson Welles’ Sketch Book, a series of six 15-minute shows featuring Welles drawing in a sketchbook to illustrate his reminiscences for the camera (including such topics as the filming of It’s All True and the Isaac Woodard case), and the second was Around the World with Orson Welles, a series of six travelogues set in different locations around Europe (such as Venice, the Basque Country between France and Spain, and England). Welles served as host and interviewer, his commentary including documentary facts and his own personal observations (a technique he would continue to explore in later works).
In 1956, Welles completed Portrait of Gina. The film cans would remain in a lost-and-found locker at the hotel for several decades, where they were discovered after Welles’s death.

Return to Hollywood (1956–1959)
Welles the magician with Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy (October 15, 1956)
In 1956, Welles returned to Hollywood.
He began filming a projected pilot for Desilu, owned by Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz, who had recently purchased the former RKO studios. The film was The Fountain of Youth, based on a story by John Collier. Originally deemed not viable as a pilot, the film was not aired until 1958—and won the Peabody Award for excellence.
Welles guest starred on television shows including I Love Lucy. On radio, he was narrator of Tomorrow (October 17, 1956), a nuclear holocaust drama produced and syndicated by ABC and the Federal Civil Defense Administration.
Welles’s next feature film role was in Man in the Shadow for Universal Pictures in 1957, starring Jeff Chandler.
Touch of Evil
Welles as corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil (1958)
Welles stayed on at Universal to direct (and co-star with) Charlton Heston in the 1958 film Touch of Evil, based on Whit Masterson’s novel Badge of Evil. Originally only hired as an actor, Welles was promoted to director by Universal Studios at the insistence of Charlton Heston.:154 The film reunited many actors and technicians with whom Welles had worked in Hollywood in the 1940s, including cameraman Russell Metty (The Stranger), makeup artist Maurice Seiderman (Citizen Kane), and actors Joseph Cotten, Marlene Dietrich and Akim Tamiroff. Filming proceeded smoothly, with Welles finishing on schedule and on budget, and the studio bosses praising the daily rushes. Nevertheless, after the end of production, the studio re-edited the film, re-shot scenes, and shot new exposition scenes to clarify the plot.:175–176 Welles wrote a 58-page memo outlining suggestions and objections, stating that the film was no longer his version—it was the studio’s, but as such, he was still prepared to help with it.:175–176
In 1978, a longer preview version of the film was discovered and released.
As Universal reworked Touch of Evil, Welles began filming his adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote in Mexico, starring Mischa Auer as Quixote and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza.

Return to Europe (1959–1970)
In Crack in the Mirror (1960)
He continued shooting Don Quixote in Spain and Italy, but replaced Mischa Auer with Francisco Reiguera, and resumed acting jobs. In Italy in 1959, Welles directed his own scenes as King Saul in Richard Pottier’s film David and Goliath. In Hong Kong he co-starred with Curt Jürgens in Lewis Gilbert’s film Ferry to Hong Kong. In 1960, in Paris he co-starred in Richard Fleischer’s film Crack in the Mirror. In Yugoslavia he starred in Richard Thorpe’s film The Tartars and Veljko Bulajić’s Battle of Neretva.
Throughout the 1960s, filming continued on Quixote on-and-off until the decade, as Welles evolved the concept, tone and ending several times. Although he had a complete version of the film shot and edited at least once, he would continue toying with the editing well into the 1980s, he never completed a version film he was fully satisfied with, and would junk existing footage and shoot new footage. (In one case, he had a complete cut ready in which Quixote and Sancho Panza end up going to the moon, but he felt the ending was rendered obsolete by the 1969 moon landings, and burned 10 reels of this version.) As the process went on, Welles gradually voiced all of the characters himself and provided narration. In 1992, the director Jesús Franco constructed a film out of the portions of Quixote left behind by Welles. Some of the film stock had decayed badly. While the Welles footage was greeted with interest, the post-production by Franco was met with harsh criticism.
Welles being interviewed in 1960
In 1961, Welles directed In the Land of Don Quixote, a series of eight half-hour episodes for the Italian television network RAI. Similar to the Around the World with Orson Welles series, they presented travelogues of Spain and included Welles’s wife, Paola, and their daughter, Beatrice. Though Welles was fluent in Italian, the network was not interested in him providing Italian narration because of his accent, and the series sat unreleased until 1964, by which time the network had added Italian narration of its own. Ultimately, versions of the episodes were released with the original musical score Welles had approved, but without the narration.
The Trial
In 1962, Welles directed his adaptation of The Trial, based on the novel by Franz Kafka and produced by Michael and Alexander Salkind. The cast included Anthony Perkins as Josef K, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Paola Mori and Akim Tamiroff. While filming exteriors in Zagreb, Welles was informed that the Salkinds had run out of money, meaning that there could be no set construction. No stranger to shooting on found locations, Welles soon filmed the interiors in the Gare d’Orsay, at that time an abandoned railway station in Paris. Welles thought the location possessed a “Jules Verne modernism” and a melancholy sense of “waiting”, both suitable for Kafka. To remain in the spirit of Kafka Welles set up the cutting room together with the Film Editor, Frederick Muller (as Fritz Muller), in the old un-used, cold, depressing, station master office. The film failed at the box-office. Peter Bogdanovich would later observe that Welles found the film riotously funny. Welles also told a BBC interviewer that it was his best film.[114] While filming The Trial Welles met Oja Kodar, who later became his mistress and collaborator for the last 20 years of his life.[17]:428
Welles played a film director in La Ricotta (1963)—Pier Paolo Pasolini’s segment of the Ro.Go.Pa.G. movie, although his renowned voice was dubbed by Italian writer Giorgio Bassani.[17]:516 He continued taking what work he could find acting, narrating or hosting other people’s work, and began filming Chimes at Midnight, which was completed in 1966.

Chimes at Midnight
Chimes at Midnight (1965)
Filmed in Spain, Chimes at Midnight was based on Welles’s play, Five Kings, in which he drew material from six Shakespeare plays to tell the story of Sir John Falstaff (Welles) and his relationship with Prince Hal (Keith Baxter). The cast includes John Gielgud, Jeanne Moreau, Fernando Rey and Margaret Rutherford; the film’s narration, spoken by Ralph Richardson, is taken from the chronicler Raphael Holinshed.:249 Welles held the film in high regard: “It’s my favorite picture, yes. If I wanted to get into heaven on the basis of one movie, that’s the one I would offer up.”:203
In 1966, Welles directed a film for French television, an adaptation of The Immortal Story, by Karen Blixen. Released in 1968, it stars Jeanne Moreau, Roger Coggio and Norman Eshley. The film had a successful run in French theaters. At this time Welles met Oja Kodar again, and gave her a letter he had written to her and had been keeping for four years; they would not be parted again. They immediately began a collaboration both personal and professional. The first of these was an adaptation of Blixen’s The Heroine, meant to be a companion piece to The Immortal Story and starring Kodar. Unfortunately, funding disappeared after one day’s shooting. After completing this film, he appeared in a brief cameo as Cardinal Wolsey in Fred Zinnemann’s adaptation of A Man for All Seasons—a role for which he won considerable acclaim.
Sergei Bondarchuk and Orson Welles at the premiere of The Battle of Neretva in Sarajevo (November 1969)
In 1967, Welles began directing The Deep, based on the novel Dead Calm by Charles Williams and filmed off the shore of Yugoslavia. The cast included Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey and Kodar. Personally financed by Welles and Kodar, they could not obtain the funds to complete the project, and it was abandoned a few years later after the death of Harvey. The surviving footage was eventually edited and released by the Filmmuseum München. In 1968 Welles began filming a TV special for CBS under the title Orson’s Bag, combining travelogue, comedy skits and a condensation of Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice with Welles as Shylock. In 1969 Welles called again the Film Editor Frederick Muller to work with him re-editing the material and they set up cutting rooms at the Safa Palatino Studios in Rome. Funding for the show sent by CBS to Welles in Switzerland was seized by the IRS. Without funding, the show was not completed. The surviving film clips portions were eventually released by the Filmmuseum München.
In 1969, Welles authorized the use of his name for a cinema in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Orson Welles Cinema remained in operation until 1986, with Welles making a personal appearance there in 1977. Also in 1969 he played a supporting role in John Huston’s The Kremlin Letter. Drawn by the numerous offers he received to work in television and films, and upset by a tabloid scandal reporting his affair with Kodar, Welles abandoned the editing of Don Quixote and moved back to America in 1970.

Later career (1970–1985)

Welles returned to Hollywood, where he continued to self-finance his film and television projects. While offers to act, narrate and host continued, Welles also found himself in great demand on television talk shows. He made frequent appearances for Dick Cavett, Johnny Carson, Dean Martin and Merv Griffin.
Welles’s primary focus during his final years was The Other Side of the Wind, an unfinished project that was filmed intermittently between 1970 and 1976. Written by Welles, it is the story of an aging film director (John Huston) looking for funds to complete his final film. The cast includes Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg, Norman Foster, Edmond O’Brien, Cameron Mitchell and Dennis Hopper. Financed by Iranian backers, ownership of the film fell into a legal quagmire after the Shah of Iran was deposed. While there have been several reports of all the legal disputes concerning ownership of the film being settled, enough disputes still exist to prevent its release.
Play media
Welles often invokes “The War of the Worlds” as host of Who’s Out There? (1973), an award-winning NASA documentary short film by Robert Drew about the likelihood of life on other planets[115][116]
Welles portrayed Louis XVIII of France in the 1970 film Waterloo, and narrated the beginning and ending scenes of the historical comedy Start the Revolution Without Me (1970).
In 1971, Welles directed a short adaptation of Moby-Dick, a one-man performance on a bare stage, reminiscent of his 1955 stage production Moby Dick—Rehearsed. Never completed, it was eventually released by the Filmmuseum München. He also appeared in Ten Days’ Wonder, co-starring with Anthony Perkins and directed by Claude Chabrol, based on a detective novel by Ellery Queen. That same year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary award “For superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures”. Welles pretended to be out of town and sent John Huston to claim the award, thanking the Academy on film. Huston criticized the Academy for awarding Welles, even while they refused to give Welles any work.
In 1972, Welles acted as on-screen narrator for the film documentary version of Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book Future Shock. Working again for a British producer, Welles played Long John Silver in director John Hough’s Treasure Island (1972), an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, which had been the second story broadcast by The Mercury Theatre on the Air in 1938. This was the last time he played the lead role in a major film. Welles also contributed to the script, his writing credit was attributed to the pseudonym ‘O. W. Jeeves’. In some versions of the film Welles’s original recorded dialog was redubbed by Robert Rietty.

Orson Welles in F for Fake (1974), a film essay and the last film he completed.
In 1973, Welles completed F for Fake, a personal essay film about art forger Elmyr de Hory and the biographer Clifford Irving. Based on an existing documentary by François Reichenbach, it included new material with Oja Kodar, Joseph Cotten, Paul Stewart and William Alland. An excerpt of Welles’s 1930s War of the Worlds broadcast was recreated for this film; however, none of the dialogue heard in the film actually matches what was originally broadcast. Welles filmed a five-minute trailer, rejected in the U.S., that featured several shots of a topless Kodar.
Welles hosted a British syndicated anthology series, Orson Welles’s Great Mysteries, during the 1973–74 television season. His brief introductions to the 26 half-hour episodes were shot in July 1973 by Gary Graver.:443 The year 1974 also saw Welles lending his voice for that year’s remake of Agatha Christie’s classic thriller Ten Little Indians produced by his former associate, Harry Alan Towers and starring an international cast that included Oliver Reed, Elke Sommer and Herbert Lom.
In 1975, Welles narrated the documentary Bugs Bunny: Superstar, focusing on Warner Bros. cartoons from the 1940s. Also in 1975, the American Film Institute presented Welles with its third Lifetime Achievement Award (the first two going to director John Ford and actor James Cagney). At the ceremony, Welles screened two scenes from the nearly finished The Other Side of the Wind.
In 1976, Paramount Television purchased the rights for the entire set of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories for Orson Welles. Welles had once wanted to make a series of Nero Wolfe movies, but Rex Stout—who was leery of Hollywood adaptations during his lifetime after two disappointing 1930s films—turned him down. Paramount planned to begin with an ABC-TV movie and hoped to persuade Welles to continue the role in a mini-series.[118] Frank D. Gilroy was signed to write the television script and direct the TV movie on the assurance that Welles would star, but by April 1977 Welles had bowed out. In 1980 the Associated Press reported “the distinct possibility” that Welles would star in a Nero Wolfe TV series for NBC television. Again, Welles bowed out of the project due to creative differences and William Conrad was cast in the role.:87–88
In 1979, Welles completed his documentary Filming Othello, which featured Michael MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards. Made for West German television, it was also released in theaters. That same year, Welles completed his self-produced pilot for The Orson Welles Show television series, featuring interviews with Burt Reynolds, Jim Henson and Frank Oz and guest-starring the Muppets and Angie Dickinson. Unable to find network interest, the pilot was never broadcast. Also in 1979, Welles appeared in the biopic The Secret of Nikola Tesla, and a cameo in The Muppet Movie as Lew Lord.
Beginning in the late 1970s, Welles participated in a series of famous television commercial advertisements. For two years he was on-camera spokesman for the Paul Masson Vineyards, and sales grew by one third during the time Welles intoned what became a popular catchphrase: “We will sell no wine before its time.” He was also the voice behind the long-running Carlsberg “Probably the best lager in the world” campaign, promoted Domecq sherry on British television and provided narration on adverts for Findus, though the actual adverts have been overshadowed by a famous blooper reel of voice recordings, known as the Frozen Peas reel. He also did commercials for the Preview Subscription Television Service seen on stations around the country including WCLQ/Cleveland, KNDL/St. Louis and WSMW/Boston.
In 1981, Welles hosted the documentary The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, about Renaissance-era prophet Nostradamus. In 1982, the BBC broadcast The Orson Welles Story in the Arena series. Interviewed by Leslie Megahey, Welles examined his past in great detail, and several people from his professional past were interviewed as well. It was reissued in 1990 as With Orson Welles: Stories of a Life in Film. Welles provided narration for the tracks “Defender” from Manowar’s 1987 album Fighting the World and “Dark Avenger” on their 1982 album, Battle Hymns. His name was misspelled on the latter album, as he was credited as “Orson Wells”.
During the 1980s, Welles worked on such film projects as The Dreamers, based on two stories by Isak Dinesen and starring Oja Kodar, and Orson Welles’ Magic Show, which reused material from his failed TV pilot. Another project he worked on was Filming The Trial, the second in a proposed series of documentaries examining his feature films. While much was shot for these projects, none of them was completed. All of them were eventually released by the Filmmuseum München.
In 1984, Welles narrated the short-lived television series Scene of the Crime. During the early years of Magnum, P.I., Welles was the voice of the unseen character Robin Masters, a famous writer and playboy. Welles’s death forced this minor character to largely be written out of the series. In an oblique homage to Welles, the Magnum, P.I. producers ambiguously concluded that story arc by having one character accuse another of having hired an actor to portray Robin Masters. He also, in this penultimate year released a music single, titled “I Know What It Is To Be Young (But You Don’t Know What It Is To Be Old)”, which he recorded under Italian label Compagnia Generale del Disco. The song was performed with the Nick Perito Orchestra and the Ray Charles Singers and produced by Jerry Abbott who was father to famed metal guitarist Dimebag Darrell.
The last film roles before Welles’s death included voice work in the animated films Enchanted Journey (1984) and The Transformers: The Movie (1986), in which he played the planet-eating robot Unicron. His last film appearance was in Henry Jaglom’s 1987 independent film Someone to Love, released after his death but produced before his voice-over in Transformers: The Movie. His last television appearance was on the television show Moonlighting. He recorded an introduction to an episode entitled “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice”, which was partially filmed in black and white. The episode aired five days after his death and was dedicated to his memory.
In the mid-1980s, Henry Jaglom taped lunch conversations with Welles at Los Angeles’s Ma Maison as well as in New York. Edited transcripts of these sessions appear in Peter Biskind’s 2013 book My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles.[132]

Personal life
Virginia Nicolson in Welles’s lap outside the Connecticut venue for the Mercury stage production Too Much Johnson (August 1938)
Welles and Dolores del Río (1941)
Wedding of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, with best man Joseph Cotten (September 7, 1943)
Paola Mori and Orson Welles, days before their marriage (May 1955)
Orson Welles and Chicago-born actress and socialite Virginia Nicolson (1916–1996) were married on November 14, 1934.:332 The couple separated in December 1939,:226 and were divorced on February 1, 1940. After bearing with Welles’s romances in New York, Virginia had learned that Welles had fallen in love with Mexican actress Dolores del Río.:227
Infatuated with her since adolescence, Welles met del Río at Darryl Zanuck’s ranch:206 soon after he moved to Hollywood in 1939.:227:168 Their relationship was kept secret until 1941, when del Río filed for divorce from her second husband. They openly appeared together in New York while Welles was directing the Mercury stage production, Native Son.:212 They acted together in the movie Journey into Fear (1943). Their relationship came to an end, among other things, due to the infidelities of Welles. Del Río returned to México in 1943, shortly before Welles married Rita Hayworth.
Welles married Rita Hayworth on September 7, 1943.:278 They were divorced on November 10, 1947.:142 During his last interview, recorded for The Merv Griffin Show on the evening before his death, Welles called Hayworth “one of the dearest and sweetest women that ever lived … and we were a long time together—I was lucky enough to have been with her longer than any of the other men in her life.”
In 1955, Welles married actress Paola Mori (née Countess Paola di Girifalco), an Italian aristocrat who starred as Raina Arkadin in his 1955 film, Mr. Arkadin. The couple had embarked on a passionate affair, and they were married at her parents’ insistence.:168 They were wed in London May 8, 1955,:417, 419 and never divorced.
Croatian-born artist and actress Oja Kodar became Welles’s longtime companion both personally and professionally from 1966 onwards, and they lived together for some of the last 20 years of his life.:255–258
Welles had three daughters from his marriages: Christopher Welles Feder (born March 27, 1938, with Virginia Nicolson);:148 Rebecca Welles Manning (December 17, 1944 – October 17, 2004, with Rita Hayworth); and Beatrice Welles (born November 13, 1955, with Paola Mori).:419
Welles is thought to have had a son, British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (born May 5, 1940), with Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, then the wife of Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th baronet. When Lindsay-Hogg was 16 his mother reluctantly divulged that there were pervasive rumors that his father was Welles, and she denied them—but in such detail that he doubted her veracity.:15 Fitzgerald evaded the subject for the rest of her life. Lindsay-Hogg knew Welles, worked with him in the theatre and met him at intervals throughout Welles’s life. After he learned that Welles’s oldest daughter Chris, his childhood playmate, had long suspected that he was her brother, Lindsay-Hogg initiated a DNA test that proved inconclusive. In his 2011 autobiography Lindsay-Hogg reported that his questions were resolved by his mother’s close friend Gloria Vanderbilt, who wrote that Fitzgerald had told her that Welles was his father.:265–267 A 2015 Welles biography by Patrick McGilligan, however, reports the impossibility of Welles’s paternity: Fitzgerald left the U.S. for Ireland in May 1939 and her son was conceived before her return in late October, while Welles did not travel overseas during that period.:602
After the death of Rebecca Welles Manning, a man named Marc McKerrow was revealed to be her son, and therefore the direct descendant of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. McKerrow’s reactions to the revelation and his meeting with Oja Kodar are documented in the 2008 film Prodigal Sons. McKerrow died on June 18, 2010.
Despite an urban legend promoted by Welles himself, he was not related to Abraham Lincoln’s wartime Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles. The myth dates back to the first newspaper feature ever written about Welles—”Cartoonist, Actor, Poet and only 10″—in the February 19, 1926, issue of The Capital Times. The article falsely states that he was descended from “Gideon Welles, who was a member of President Lincoln’s cabinet”.:47–48[63]:311 As presented by Charles Higham in a genealogical chart that introduces his 1985 biography of Welles, Orson Welles’s father was Richard Head Welles (born Wells), son of Richard Jones Wells, son of Henry Hill Wells (who had an uncle named Gideon Wells), son of William Hill Wells, son of Richard Wells (1734–1801).
Physical characteristics

Peter Noble’s 1956 biography describes Welles as “a magnificent figure of a man, over six feet tall, handsome, with flashing eyes and a gloriously resonant speaking-voice”.:19 Welles said that a voice specialist once told him he was born to be a heldentenor, a heroic tenor, but that when he was young and working at the Gate Theatre in Dublin he forced his voice down into a bass-baritone.:144
Even as a baby Welles was prone to illness, including diphtheria, measles, whooping cough and malaria. From infancy he suffered from asthma, sinus headaches, and backache:8 that was later found to be caused by congenital anomalies of the spine. Foot and ankle trouble throughout his life was the result of flat feet.:560 “As he grew older,” Brady wrote, “his ill health was exacerbated by the late hours he was allowed to keep [and] an early penchant for alcohol and tobacco”.:8
In 1928, at age 13, Welles was already more than six feet tall and weighed over 180 pounds.:50 His passport recorded his height as six feet three inches, with brown hair and green eyes.:229
“Crash diets, drugs, and corsets had slimmed him for his early film roles,” wrote biographer Barton Whaley. “Then always back to gargantuan consumption of high-caloric food and booze. By summer 1949, when he was 34, his weight had crept up to a stout 230 pounds. In 1953 he ballooned from 250 to 275 pounds. After 1960 he remained permanently obese.”:329
Religious beliefs

When Peter Bogdanovich once asked him about his religion, Orson Welles gruffly replied that it was none of his business, then misinformed him that he was raised Catholic.:xxx:12
Although the Welles family was no longer devout, it was fourth-generation Protestant Episcopalian and, before that, Quaker and Puritan.:12 Welles’s earliest paternal forebear in America, Richard Wells, was a leader of the Quaker community in Pennsylvania. His earliest maternal ancestor in America was John Alden, a crew member on the Pilgrim ship Mayflower.:5
The funeral of Welles’s father Richard H. Welles was Episcopalian.:12
In April 1982, when interviewer Merv Griffin asked him about his religious beliefs, Welles replied, “I try to be a Christian. I don’t pray really, because I don’t want to bore God.”:576 Near the end of his life Welles was dining at Ma Maison, his favorite restaurant in Los Angeles, when proprietor Patrick Terrail conveyed an invitation from the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, who asked Welles to be his guest of honor at divine liturgy at Saint Sophia Cathedral. Welles replied, “Please tell him I really appreciate that offer, but I am an atheist.”:104–105
“Orson never joked or teased about the religious beliefs of others,” wrote biographer Barton Whaley. “He accepted it as a cultural artifact, suitable for the births, deaths, and marriages of strangers and even some friends—but without emotional or intellectual meaning for himself.”:12

Politics
Welles was politically active from the beginning of his career. He remained aligned with the left throughout his life, and always defined his political orientation as “progressive”. He was a strong supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, and often spoke out on radio in support of progressive politics. He campaigned heavily for Roosevelt in the 1944 election.
“During a White House dinner,” Welles recalled in a 1983 conversation with his friend Roger Hill, “when I was campaigning for Roosevelt, in a toast, with considerable tongue in cheek, he said, ‘Orson, you and I are the two greatest actors alive today’. In private that evening, and on several other occasions, he urged me to run for a Senate seat either in California or Wisconsin. He wasn’t alone.”:115
For several years, he wrote a newspaper column on political issues and considered running for the U.S. Senate in 1946, representing his home state of Wisconsin (a seat that was ultimately won by Joseph McCarthy).
Welles’s name and political activities are reported on pages 155–157 of Red Channels, the anti-Communist publication that, in part, fueled the already flourishing Hollywood Blacklist. He was in Europe during the height of the Red Scare, thereby adding one more reason for the Hollywood establishment to ostracize him.
In 1970, Welles narrated (but did not write) a satirical political record on the administration of President Richard Nixon titled The Begatting of the President.
He was also an early and outspoken critic of American racism and the practice of segregation.

Death and tributes

On the evening of October 9, 1985, Welles recorded his final interview on the syndicated TV program, The Merv Griffin Show, appearing with biographer Barbara Leaming. “Both Welles and Leaming talked of Welles’s life and the segment was a nostalgic interlude,” wrote biographer Frank Brady.[20]:590–591 Welles returned to his house in Hollywood and worked into the early hours typing stage directions for the project he and Gary Graver were planning to shoot at UCLA the following day. Welles died sometime on the morning of October 10, following a heart attack.:453 He was found by his chauffeur at around 10 a.m.; the first of Welles’s friends to arrive was Paul Stewart.:295–297
Welles was cremated by prior agreement with the executor of his estate, Greg Garrison,:592 whose advice about making lucrative TV appearances in the 1970s made it possible for Welles to pay off a portion of the taxes he owed the IRS.:549–550 A brief private funeral was attended by Paola Mori and Welles’s three daughters—the first time they had ever been together. Only a few close friends were invited: Garrison, Graver, Roger Hill[63]:298 and Prince Alessandro Tasca di Cuto. Chris Welles Feder later described the funeral as an awful experience.:1–9
A public memorial tribute:593 took place November 2, 1985, at the Directors Guild of America Theater in Los Angeles. Host Peter Bogdanovich introduced speakers including Charles Champlin, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Greg Garrison, Charlton Heston, Roger Hill, Henry Jaglom, Arthur Knight, Oja Kodar, Barbara Leaming, Janet Leigh, Norman Lloyd, Dan O’Herlihy, Patrick Terrail and Robert Wise.:594:299–300
“I know what his feelings were regarding his death,” Joseph Cotten later wrote. “He did not want a funeral; he wanted to be buried quietly in a little place in Spain. He wanted no memorial services …” Cotten declined to attend the memorial program; instead he sent a short message, ending with the last two lines of a Shakespeare sonnet that Welles had sent him on his most recent birthday::216
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.:217
In 1987 the ashes of Welles and Mori (killed in a 1986 car crash) were taken to Ronda, Spain, and buried in an old well covered by flowers on the rural estate of a longtime friend, bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez.:298–299

Unfinished projects

Welles’s reliance on self-production meant that many of his later projects were filmed piecemeal or were not completed. Welles financed his later projects through his own fundraising activities. He often also took on other work to obtain money to fund his own films.
Don Quixote
In the mid-1950s, Welles began work on Don Quixote, initially a commission from CBS television. Welles expanded the film to feature length, developing the screenplay to take Quixote and Sancho Panza into the modern age. Filming stopped with the death of Francisco Reiguera, the actor playing Quixote, in 1969. Orson Welles continued editing the film into the early 1970s. At the time of his death, the film remained largely a collection of footage in various states of editing. The project and more importantly Welles’s conception of the project changed radically over time. A version of the film was created from available fragments in 1992 and released to a very negative reception. A version Oja Kodar supervised, with help from Jess Franco, assistant director during production, was released in 2008 to mixed reactions. Frederick Muller – the film editor for The Trial, Chimes at Midnight and the CBS Special “Orson Bag” was fortunate to work on editing three reels of the original, unadulterated version – was asked for his opinion in 2013 from a journalist of Time Out, his reply was he felt that if released without image re-editing but with the addition of ad hoc sound and music it probably would have been rather successful.

The Merchant of Venice
In 1969, Welles was given another TV commission to film a condensed adaptation of The Merchant of Venice.:XXXIV Although Welles had actually completed the film by 1970 the finished negative was later mysteriously stolen from his Rome production office.:234 A restored and reconstructed version of the film, made by using the original script and composer’s notes, premiered at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival alongside Othello as part of the pre-opening ceremonies.

The Other Side of the Wind
In 1970, Welles began shooting The Other Side of the Wind. The film relates the efforts of a film director (played by John Huston) to complete his last Hollywood picture and is largely set at a lavish party. By 1972 the filming was reported by Welles as being “96% complete”,:546 though it is likely that Welles had only edited about 40 minutes of the film by 1979.:320 In that year, legal complications over the ownership of the film forced the negative into a Paris vault. In 2004 director Peter Bogdanovich, who acted in the film, announced his intention to complete the production. As of 2009, legal complications over the Welles estate had kept the film from being finished or released.
On October 28, 2014, the Los Angeles-based production company Royal Road Entertainment announced that it had negotiated an agreement, with the assistance of producer Frank Marshall, and would purchase the rights to complete and release The Other Side of the Wind. Bogdanovich and Marshall will complete Welles’s nearly finished film in Los Angeles, aiming to have it ready for screening May 6, 2015 — the 100th anniversary of Welles’s birth. Royal Road Entertainment and German producer Jens Koethner Kaul acquired the rights held by Les Films de l’Astrophore and the late Mehdi Boushehri. They reached an agreement with Oja Kodar, who inherited Welles’s ownership of the film, and Beatrice Welles, manager of the Welles estate; but at the end of 2015, efforts to complete the film were at an impasse.
Some footage is included in the documentaries Working with Orson Welles (1993) and Orson Welles: One Man Band (1995).

Other unfinished films and unfilmed screenplays

* Too Much Johnson, a 1938 comedy film written and directed by Welles. Designed as the cinematic aspect of Welles’s Mercury Theatre stage presentation of William Gillette’s 1894 comedy, the film was not completely edited or publicly screened. Too Much Johnson was considered a lost film until August 2013 news reports that a pristine print was discovered in Italy in 2008. A copy restored by the George Eastman House museum was scheduled to premiere October 9, 2013, at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, with a U.S. premiere to follow. A single performance of Too Much Johnson, on 2/2/15, at the Film Forum in NYC, was a great success. Produced by Bruce Goldstein and adapted and directed by Allen Lewis Rickman, it featured the Film Forum Players with live piano.
* Heart of Darkness: Welles’s projected first film in 1940, planned in extreme detail and with some test shots filmed. (The footage is now lost.) It was planned to be entirely shot in long takes from the point of view of the narrator, Marlow, who would be played by Welles; his reflection would occasionally be seen in the window as his boat sailed down river. The project was abandoned because it could not be delivered on budget, and Citizen Kane was made instead.:30–33, 355–356
* Santa: In 1941, Welles planned a film to his then partner, the Mexican actress Dolores del Río. The film was adapted from the novel by Mexican writer Federico Gamboa. The film which marked the debut of Dolores del Río in the Mexican Cinema. Welles made a correction of the script in thirteen extraordinary sequences. Unfortunately, the high salary demanded by Del Río threw overboard the project. In 1943, the film finally done with the settings of Welles, led by Norman Foster and starring Mexican actress Esther Fernández.
* The Way to Santiago: In 1941 Welles also planned a Mexican drama with Dolores del Río, which he gave to RKO to be budgeted. The film would a movie version of the same name novel by Calder Marshall. In the story, Dolores del Río would play Elena Medina, “the most beautiful girl in the world”, with Welles playing an American who becomes entangled in a mission to disrupt a Nazi plot to overthrow the Mexican government. Welles planned to shoot in Mexico, but the Mexican government had to approve the story, and this never occurred.[160]
* The Life of Christ: In 1941, Welles received the support of Bishop Fulton Sheen for a retelling of the life of Christ to be set in the American West in the 1890s. After filming of Citizen Kane was complete,[161] Welles, Perry Ferguson and Gregg Toland scouted locations in Baja California and Mexico. Welles wrote a screenplay with dialogue from the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke. “Every word in the film was to be from the Bible — no original dialogue, but done as a sort of American primitive,” Welles said, “set in the frontier country in the last century.” The unrealized project was revisited by Welles in the 1950s when he wrote a second unfilmed screenplay, to be shot in Egypt.:361–362
* It’s All True: Welles did not originally want to direct this 1942 documentary on South America, but after its abandonment by RKO, he spent much of the 1940s attempting to buy the negative of his material from RKO, so that he could edit and release it in some form. The footage remained unseen in vaults for decades, and was assumed lost. Over 50 years later, some (but not all) of the surviving material saw release in the 1993 documentary It’s All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles.
* Monsieur Verdoux: In 1944, Welles wrote the first-draft script of this film, which he also intended to direct. Charlie Chaplin initially agreed to star in it, but later changed his mind, citing never having been directed by someone else in a feature before. Chaplin bought the film rights and made the film himself in 1947, with some changes (Welles said the gallows scenes were written by Chaplin, but that much of the film was unchanged from his own script). The final film credits Chaplin with the script, “based on an idea by Orson Welles”.
* Cyrano de Bergerac: Welles spent around nine months c. 1947-8 co-writing the screenplay for this along with Ben Hecht, a project Welles was assigned to direct for Alexander Korda. He began scouting for locations in Europe whilst filming Black Magic, but Korda was short of money, so sold the rights to Columbia pictures, who eventually dismissed Welles from the project, and then sold the rights on to United Artists, who in turn made a film version in 1950, which was not based on Welles’s script.:106–108
* Around the World in Eighty Days: After Welles’s elaborate musical stageshow of this Jules Verne novel, encompassing 38 different sets, he began shooting some test footage in Morocco for a film version in 1947. The footage was never edited, funding never came through, and Welles abandoned the project. Nine years later, the stage show’s producer Mike Todd made his own award-winning film version of the book.:402
* Moby Dick—Rehearsed: a film version of Welles’s 1955 London meta-play, starring Gordon Jackson, Christopher Lee, Patrick McGoohan, and with Welles as Ahab. Using bare, minimalist sets, Welles alternated between a cast of nineteenth-century actors rehearsing a production of Moby Dick, with scenes from Moby Dick itself. Kenneth Williams, a cast member who was apprehensive about the entire project, recorded in his autobiography that Welles’s dim, atmospheric stage lighting made some of the footage so dark as to be unwatchable. The entire play was filmed, but is now presumed lost. This was made during one weekend at the Hackney Empire theatre.
* Histoires extraordinaires: The producers of this 1968 anthology film, based on short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, announced in June 1967 that Welles would direct one segment based on both “Masque of the Red Death” and “The Cask of Amontillado” for the omnibus film. Welles withdrew in September 1967 and was replaced. The script, written in English by Welles and Oja Kodar, is in the Filmmuseum Munchen collection.
* One-Man Band: This Monty Python-esque spoof in which Welles plays all but one of the characters (including two characters in drag), was made around 1968-9. Welles intended this completed sketch to be one of several items in a television special on London. Other items filmed for this special – all included in the “One Man Band” documentary by his partner Oja Kodar – comprised a sketch on Winston Churchill (played in silhouette by Welles), a sketch on peers in a stately home, a feature on London gentlemen’s clubs, and a sketch featuring Welles being mocked by his snide Savile Row tailor (played by Charles Gray).
* Treasure Island: Welles wrote two screenplays for this in the 1960s, and was eager to seek financial backing to direct it. Eventually, his own screenplay (under the pseudonym of O.W. Jeeves) was further rewritten, and formed the basis of the 1972 film version directed by John Hough, in which Welles played Long John Silver.
* The Deep: An adaptation of Charles Williams’ Dead Calm. The picture was entirely set on two boats and shot mostly in close-ups, and was filmed off the coasts of Yugoslavia and the Bahamas, between 1966 and 1969, with all but one scene completed. Originally planned as commercially viable thriller, to show that Welles could make a popular, successful film. It was put on hold in 1970 when Welles worried that critics would not respond favourably to this film as his theatrical follow-up to the much-lauded Chimes at Midnight, and Welles focused instead on F for Fake. It was abandoned altogether in 1973 due to the death of its star Laurence Harvey.
* Dune: An early attempt at adapting Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune by Chilean film director Alejandro Jodorowsky was to star Welles as the evil Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, whom Jodorowsky had personally chosen for the role. However, the planned film never advanced past pre-production.
* Saint Jack. In 1978 Welles was lined up by his long-time protégé Peter Bogdanovich (who was then acting as Welles’s de facto agent) to direct this adaptation of the 1973 Paul Theroux novel about an American pimp in Singapore. Hugh Hefner and Bogdanovich’s then-partner Cybill Shepherd were both attached to the project as producers, with Hefner providing finance through his Playboy productions. However, both Hefner and Shepherd became convinced that Bogdanovich himself would be a more commercially viable director than Welles, and insisted that Bogdanovich take over. Since Bogdanovich was also in need of work after a series of box office flops, he agreed. When the film was finally made in 1979 by Bogdanovich and Hefner (but without Welles or Shepherd’s participation), Welles felt betrayed and according to Bogdanovich the two “drifted apart a bit”.
* Filming The Trial: After the success of his 1978 film Filming Othello made for West German television, and mostly consisting of a monologue to the camera, Welles began shooting scenes for this follow-up film, but never completed it.:253 What Welles did film was an 80-minute question-and-answer session in 1981 with film students asking about the film. The footage was kept by Welles’s cinematographer Gary Graver, who donated it to the Munich Film Museum, which then pieced it together with Welles’s trailer for the film, into an 83-minute film which is occasionally screened at film festivals.
* The Big Brass Ring: This 1982 screenplay, written by Welles with Oja Kodar was adapted and filmed by director George Hickenlooper in partnership with writer F.X. Feeney. Both the Welles script and the 1999 film center on a U.S. Presidential hopeful in his 40s, his elderly mentor—a former candidate for the Presidency, brought low by homosexual scandal—and the Italian journalist probing for the truth of the relationship between these men. During the last years of his life, Welles struggled to get financing for the planned film; however, his efforts at casting Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds and Paul Newman as the main character were unsuccessful. All of the actors turned down the role for various reasons.
* Cradle Will Rock: Welles planned on writing and directing a film about the 1937 staging of The Cradle Will Rock. Rupert Everett was slated to play the young Welles. However, Welles was unable to acquire funding. Tim Robbins later directed a similar film, but it was not based on Welles’s script.
* King Lear: At the time of his death, Welles was in talks with a French production company to direct a film version of the Shakespeare play, in which he would also play the title role.
* An adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Ada for which Welles flew to Paris to discuss the project personally with the Russian author.
* 1979: Welles was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.
* 1981: Welles received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Recording for his role on Donovan’s Brain.
* 1982: In Paris on February 23, 1982, President François Mitterrand presented Welles with the Order of Commander of the Légion d’honneur, the highest civilian decoration in France.:449:207
* 1982: Welles was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture at the Golden Globe Awards for his role in Butterfly, the same role that had him nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor, won by Ed McMahon in the same film, which also won the award for Worst Picture.
* 1983: Welles was made a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.:508
* 1983: Welles was awarded a Fellowship of the British Film Institute in 1983.
* 1984: In 1984 the Directors Guild of America presented Welles with its greatest honor, the D. W. Griffith Award.
* 1985: Welles received the Career Achievement Award from the National Board of Review.
* 1993: The 1992 audiobook version of This is Orson Welles by Welles and Peter Bogdanovich was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album.
* 1998: In 1998 and 2007, the American Film Institute ranked Citizen Kane as the greatest American movie. These other Welles films were nominated for the AFI list: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, director/producer/screenwriter); The Third Man (1949, actor); Touch of Evil (1958, actor/director/screenwriter); and A Man for All Seasons (1966, actor).
* 1999: The American Film Institute acknowledged Welles as one of the top 25 male motion picture stars of Classic Hollywood cinema in its survey, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Stars.
* 2002: A highly divergent genus of Hawaiian spiders Orsonwelles is named in his honor.
* 2007: A statue of Welles sculpted by Oja Kodar was installed in the city of Split, Croatia.:256
* 2013: On February 10, 2013, the Woodstock Opera House in Woodstock, Illinois, dedicated its stage to Welles, honoring the site of his American debut as a professional theatre director.
* 2015: Throughout 2015, numerous festivals and events observed the 100th anniversary of Welles’s birth.

Jerrel McQueen and Timothy Holmes illustrated this book published in 2007 by Beautiful America Publishing Company.
The Cinnamon Bear is an old time radio program produced by Transco (Transcription Company of America), based in Hollywood, California. The series was specifically designed to be listened to six days a week between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

It was first broadcast between Friday, November 26 and Saturday December 25, 1937. Some markets like Portland, Oregon jumped the gun, debuting the program on November 25, Thanksgiving Day. In the first season, Portland broadcast the program on two stations, KALE at 6:00pm and KXL at 7:00pm.

When syndication problems arose at Transco, the program was not officially broadcast in 1940, although some stations might have aired previous transcriptions. No program aired in Portland that year. In 1941, Transco programming was sold to Broadcasters Program Syndicate, and The Cinnamon Bear was on the air nationally once again. In the 1950s, syndication was taken over by Lou R. Winston, also based in Hollywood.

An original Lipman-Wolfe & Company newspaper ad from the Portland Oregon Journal, November 25, 1937 read:

Introducing Paddy O’Cinnamon, Santa Claus’s right-hand man! Meet him with Santa in Toyland at Lipman’s… and don’t miss his exciting adventures with Judy and Jimmy (two of the nicest playmates you could ever want). and some nights you’ll be so anxious to hear how they got the Silver Star back from the wicked Crazyquilt Dragon that you’ll listen twice! And here’s a secret… the Cinnamon Bear is just as excited about meeting you as he can be.
Plot

The story focused on Judy and Jimmy Barton who go to the enchanted world of Maybeland to recover their missing Silver Star that belongs on their Christmas tree. Helping on the search is the Cinnamon Bear, a stuffed bear with shoe-button eyes and a green ribbon around his neck. They meet other memorable characters during their quest, including the Crazy Quilt Dragon (who repeatedly tries to take the star for himself), the Wintergreen Witch, Fe Fo the Giant and Santa Claus.

Episodes began at Thanksgiving and ended at Christmas, with one episode airing each night. The show was created by a group of merchants as an advertising promotion, and was recorded in only a few weeks. It was produced by Lindsay MacHarrie, who also provided the voice of Westley the Whale and several other characters.

Cast and crew

The voice of The Cinnamon Bear was provided by Buddy Duncan, a midget and vaudeville comedian. Many notable radio voices lent their talents, including:

It is not known for sure who played Jimmy Barton. Old time radio fans think it was either Walter Tetley of The Great Gildersleeve and The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, or Tommy Carr of the radio show, Magic Island. Radio announcer Bud Heistand served as the narrator. Lindsay MacHarrie was also the producer of the show.

Both actors Gale Gordon as Weary Willie the Stork and Oliver Ostrich and Joseph Kearns as The Crazy-Quilt Dragon would later go on to work on the 1959 television show Dennis the Menace. Gale Gordon was under contract to play John Wilson (after the death of Joseph Kearns, who played George Wilson) on Dennis the Menace.

The story and all the songs were written in six weeks’ time by Glan Heisch, aided by his wife, Elisabeth A. Heisch (1908–2003). He was specifically directed to create something in the style of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Public reception

The radio show proved to be so popular that the Metropolitan Washington Old-Time Radio Club says it has been broadcast by a station somewhere in the world every year during the holidays, even today. Many malls had a Cinnamon Bear that children would tell what they wanted for gifts instead of a Santa, and he would show up in Christmas parades. The Cinnamon Bear has remained especially popular in Portland Oregon, which was often cited as a “Cinnamon Bear hotspot.”

Television

In 1951, for a Cinnamon Bear television series, the characters were hand puppets, and the radio program provided the soundtrack.

Rights

The copyright is now held by the eldest child of Glan and Elisabeth Heisch, Catherine Borchmann of Rockford, Illinois. Catherine inherited the property following the death of Elisabeth Heisch in 2003. There was a lengthy legal battle in the early 2000s in which the heirs of Glanville Heisch (who died in 1986) prevailed, and the copyright of the radio play was returned to the family.

No Sound Recordings prior to 1972 are protected by federal copyright law. State common law copyright applies. The safe position is that no sound recordings are in the public domain because state common law doesn’t have legislative limits.

A federal trademark for the Portland Spirit Cinnamon Bear was filed and registered in 2004.

Books and publications

In 1987, upon the 50th anniversary of The Cinnamon Bear, a fan of the show started an annual newsletter called “Bear Facts” and put out by “The Cinnamon Bear Brigade,” which ran for five years.

The Cinnamon Bear in the Adventure of the Silver Star (2007) by Rick Lewis and Veronica Marzilli was published during the 70th anniversary of The Cinnamon Bear. Jerrel McQueen and Timothy Holmes provided the illustrations.

Influence

Timothy John, a proposed radio serial by Carlton E. Morse, featured a teddy bear who spoke with an Irish accent. As noted by Martin Grams, Jr., Morse’s unused plot synopsis was obviously inspired by The Cinnamon Bear.

Lipman’s is probably best remembered for the Cinnamon Bear, a popular Portland Christmas time tradition since 1937. The Cinnamon Bear was introduced as a Lipman’s-sponsored radio story character, meant to count down the days until Christmas. Along with Santa Claus, his costumed likeness appeared every Christmas at Lipman’s stores, handing out cookies to children. Frederick & Nelson continued the practice after absorbing the brand. The Cinnamon Bear survives today as a souvenir at the Fifth Avenue Suites. To this day, the Cinnamon Bear is aired during the holidays on K103. The Cinnamon Bear radio show can also be heard on Kool 99.1 in Eugene, Oregon every Christmas

Portland Spirit Cruises developed the first Cinnamon Bear Cruise in 2005, based on the radio show by Glanville and Elizabeth Heisch’s memorable characters and the radio show. Becoming a family tradition in Portland, Oregon, the cruise entering its 5th year in 2009, sells out to thousands of family members during the month of December. On board, children of all ages meet Queen Melissa, Cinnamon Bear, Crazy Quilt Dragon, Presto the Magician, Captain Taffy and the Candy Buccaneers and numerous other magical characters from the radio series.

Actress Charlize Theron
Actress
Charlize Theron
Actor and Political Activist Sean Penn
Actor and Political Activist
Sean Penn
Jan 25 20th Sundance Film Festival: “Primer”, directed by Shane Carruth, wins Grand Jury Prize Dramatic
Jan 26 President Hamid Karzai signs the new constitution of Afghanistan.
Jan 26 A whale explodes in the town of Tainan, Taiwan. A build-up of gas in the decomposing sperm whale is suspected of causing the explosion.
Feb 1 251 people are trampled to death and 244 injured in a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.
Event of interestEvent of Interest

Feb 1 Wardrobe malfunction: Janet Jackson’s breast is exposed during the half-time show of Super Bowl XXXVIII, resulting in US broadcasters adopting a stronger adherence to FCC censorship guidelines.

Feb 18 Greg Maddux signs with the Chicago Cubs, the team he began his career with

MLB Pitching Legend Greg Maddux
MLB Pitching Legend
Greg Maddux
Feb 19 Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal is awarded an honorary knighthood in recognition of a “lifetime of service to humanity.”
Feb 21 The first European political party organization, the European Greens, is established in Rome.
Feb 26 Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski is killed in a plane crash near Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Feb 26 The United States lifts a ban on travel to Libya, ending travel restrictions to the nation that had lasted for 23 years.
Feb 27 Former BPMC general secretary Ordrick Samuel launches a new party in Barbuda, Barbudans for a Better Barbuda.
Feb 27 A bombing of a Superferry by Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines worst terrorist attack kills 116.
Feb 28 Over 1 million Taiwanese participating in the 228 Hand-in-Hand Rally form a 500-kilometre (300-mile) long human chain to commemorate the 228 Incident in 1947
Feb 28 24th Golden Raspberry Awards: Gigli wins
Feb 29 Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigns as President of Haiti following popular rebel uprising.
Feb 29 76th Academy Awards: “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” Sean Penn & Charlize Theron win
Mar 1 Terry Nichols is convicted of state murder charges and being an accomplice to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Mar 1 Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum becomes President of Iraq.
Mar 2 Voters in the U.S. state of Georgia vote on a referendum concerning its Confederacy-derived flag.
Mar 2 War in Iraq: Al Qaeda carries out the Ashoura Massacre in Iraq, killing 170 and wounding over 500.
Mar 2 Rosetta space probe is launched by the European Space Agency to study comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko with Philae lander module aboard
Mar 3 Belgian brewer Interbrew and Brazilian rival AmBev agreed to merge in a $11.2 billion deal that formed InBev, the world’s largest brewer.
Mar 6 35th NAACP Image Awards: “The Fighting Temptations” wins Outstanding Motion Picture
Mar 7 New Democracy wins the national elections in Greece.
Mar 8 A new constitution is signed by Iraq’s Governing Council.
Mar 11 Terrorists explode simultaneous bombs on Madrid’s rail network ripping through a commuter train and rocking three stations, killing 190
Mar 12 Roh Moo-hyun, President of South Korea is impeached by its national assembly for the first time in the nation’s history.
Mar 13 25th Big East Men’s Basketball Tournament: Connecticut beats Pittsburgh, 61-58
Mar 14 51st ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament: Maryland beats #5 Duke, 95-87
Mar 14 45th SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament: Kentucky beats Florida, 89-73
Mar 15 Announcement of the discovery of 90377 Sedna, the farthest natural object in the Solar system so far observed.
Mar 17 Unrest in Kosovo results in more than 22 killed, 200 wounded, and the destruction of 35 Serb Orthodox shrines in Kosovo and two mosques in Belgrade and Nis.
Mar 19 A truck and a bus crash head-on in Äänekoski, Finland. 24 people are killed and 13 injured.
Mar 19 A Swedish DC-3 shot down by a Russian MiG-15 in the 1950s is finally recovered after years of work. The remains of the crew are left in place, pending further investigations.
Mar 19 Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian is shot just before the country’s presidential election on March 20.
Event of interestEvent of Interest

Mar 20 Stephen Harper wins the leadership of the newly created Conservative Party of Canada, becoming the party’s first leader.

R&B Singer R. Kelly
R&B Singer
R. Kelly
Singer Janet Jackson
Singer
Janet Jackson
Singer Beyoncé Knowles
Singer
Beyoncé Knowles
Mar 21 In Malaysia, the 11th Federal and State elections are held, returning the ruling coalition Barisan Nasional to power with an increased majority.
Mar 22 Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and leader of the Palestinian Sunni Islamist militant group Hamas, and bodyguards are killed in the Gaza Strip when hit by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache fired Hellfire missiles.
Mar 23 Andhra Pradesh Federation of Trade Unions holds its first conference in Hyderabad, India.
Mar 27 HMS Scylla, a decommissioned Leander class frigate, is sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall, the first of its kind in Europe.
Mar 29 Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members.
Mar 29 The Republic of Ireland becomes the first country in the world to ban smoking in all work places, including bars and restaurants.
Mar 31 In Fallujah, Iraq, 4 American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed and their bodies mutilated after being ambushed.
Apr 1 Google introduces Gmail: the launch is met with scepticism on account of the launch date.
Apr 2 Islamist terrorists involved in the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks attempt to bomb the Spanish high-speed train AVE near Madrid. Their attack is thwarted.
Apr 3 Islamic terrorists involved in the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.
Apr 3 157th Grand National: Graham Lee aboard Amberleigh House wins
Apr 5 66th NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship: Connecticut beats Georgia Tech 82-73
Apr 6 Rolandas Paksas becomes the first president of Lithuania to be peacefully removed from the post by impeachment.
Apr 6 23rd NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship: Connecticut beats Tennessee 70-61
Apr 8 Darfur conflict: The Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement is signed by the Sudanese government and two rebel groups
Battle9/11 Attack on New York’s World Trade Towers

Apr 8 U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice testifies before the 9/11 Commission

UA Flight 175 flies toward the south tower of the World Trade Center while the north tower burns
UA Flight 175 flies toward the south tower of the World Trade Center while the north tower burns
Sport awardGolf Major

Singer Shania Twain
Singer
Shania Twain
Apr 22 Two fuel trains collide in Ryongchon, North Korea, killing up to 150 people.
Apr 24 The United States lifts economic sanctions imposed on Libya 18 years previously, as a reward for its cooperation in eliminating weapons of mass destruction.
Apr 24 2004 NFL Draft: Eli Manning from Ole Miss first pick by San Diego Chargers
Apr 28 Shrek the sheep from Tarra New Zealand, is finally shorn live on tv after 6 years avoidance, the fleece weighed 27 kg (60 lb)
Event of interestEvent of Interest

Apr 29 Dick Cheney and George W. Bush testify before the 9/11 Commission in a closed, unrecorded hearing in the Oval Office.

46th Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney
46th Vice President of the United States
Dick Cheney
43rd US President George W. Bush
43rd US President
George W. Bush
Apr 29 Oldsmobile builds its final car ending 107 years of production.
Apr 30 U.S. media release graphic photos of American soldiers abusing and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
May 1 Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia join the European Union, celebrated at the residence of the Irish President in Dublin.
May 1 130th Kentucky Derby: Stewart Elliott aboard Smarty Jones wins in 2:04.06
May 2 Yelwa massacre of more than 630 nomad Muslims by Christians in Nigeria.
May 6 TV sitcom Friends airs season finale in 10th and final season in US (52.5 million viewers)
May 9 Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov is killed in a land mine bomb blast under a VIP stage during a World War II memorial victory parade in Grozny, Chechnya.
May 13 The final episode of “Frasier” on NBC is watched by 33 million people
May 14 The Constitutional Court of South Korea overturns the impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyun.
May 15 129th Preakness: Stewart Elliott aboard Smarty Jones wins in 1:55.59
Film release premierFilm Premier

May 15 “Shrek 2” directed Andrew Adamson and Kelly Asbury, with voices by Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz premieres at the Cannes Film Festival

Actor Eddie Murphy
Actor
Eddie Murphy
Actress Cameron Diaz
Actress
Cameron Diaz
May 15 49th Eurovision Song Contest: Ruslana for Ukraine wins singing “Wild Dances” in Istanbul
May 16 The Day of Mourning at Bykivnia forest, just outside of Kiev, Ukraine. Here during 1930s and early 1940s communist bolsheviks executed over 100,000 Ukrainian civilians.
May 17 Massachusetts becomes the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage
May 18 Arizona Diamondbacks’ Randy Johnson becomes 16th pitcher to throw a perfect game (2-0 vs Atlanta)
May 19 NHL Western Conference Final: Calgary Flames beat San Jose Sharks, 4 games to 2
May 21 Sherpa Pemba Dorjie climbs Mount Everest in 8 hours 10 minutes, breaking his rival Sherpa Lakpa Gelu’s record from the previous year.
May 21 Stanislav Petrov awarded World Citizen Award for averting a potential nuclear war in 1983 after correctly guessing Russian early warning system at fault
May 22 The U.S. town of Hallam, Nebraska, is wiped out by a powerful F4 tornado that broke a width record at an astounding 2.5 miles wide. It also kills one local resident.
Event of interestEvent of Interest

May 22 57th Cannes Film Festival: “Fahrenheit 9/11”, directed by Michael Moore wins the Palme d’Or. First documentary to win.

Documentary Filmmaker Michael Moore
Documentary Filmmaker
Michael Moore
May 22 NHL Eastern Conference Finals: Tampa Bay Lightning beat Philadelphia Flyers, 4 games to 3
May 23 Part of Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport’s Terminal 2E collapses, killing four people and injuring three others.
May 24 North Korea bans mobile phones.
May 26 The New York Times publishes admission of journalistic failings, claims its flawed reporting and lack of skeptism during buildup to 2003 Iraq War helped promote belief that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
May 26 The United States Army veteran Terry Nichols is found guilty of 161 state murder charges for helping carry out the Oklahoma City bombing.
May 26 39th Academy of Country Music Awards: Toby Keith & Martina McBride win
May 26 12th UEFA Champions League Final: Porto beats AS Monaco 3-0 at Gelsenkirchen
May 28 The Iraqi Governing Council chooses Ayad Allawi, a longtime anti-Saddam Hussein exile, to become Prime Minister of Iraq’s interim government.
May 29 The World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
May 29 The Al-Khobar massacres in Saudi Arabia kill 22.
May 30 Indianapolis 500: Buddy Rice wins in 3:14:55.2395 (222.923 km/h)
Film release premierFilm Release

May 31 “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”, the 3rd film based on the books by J. K. Rowling is released in UK cinemas.

Jun 23 Bob Dylan accepts honorary doctorate of music degree from the University of St Andrews, Scotland’s oldest university

Singer-Songwriter Bob Dylan
Singer-Songwriter
Bob Dylan
Jun 24 Capital punishment is declared unconstitutional in New York
Jun 28 Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism
Jun 28 The 17th NATO Summit starts in Istanbul.
Jun 28 Sovereign power is handed to the interim government of Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority, ending the U.S.-led rule of that nation.
Film release premierFilm Release

Actress Kirsten Dunst
Actress
Kirsten Dunst
Jul 1 Saturn Orbit insertion of Cassini-Huygens begins at 01:12 UTC and ends at 02:48 UTC.
Jul 2 ASEAN Regional Forum accepts Pakistan as its 24th member.
Jul 3 Official opening of Bangkok’s subway system.
Jul 4 The cornerstone of the Freedom Tower is laid on the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. (This was largely a symbolic event; actual construction would not start for several weeks)
Sport awardTennis Open

Actor Kal Penn
Actor
Kal Penn
Aug 1 A supermarket fire kills 396 people and injures 500 in Asunción, Paraguay.
Aug 3 The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty reopens after being closed since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Hall of fameHall of Fame

Aug 8 John Elway is inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame

NFL Quarterback John Elway
NFL Quarterback
John Elway
Aug 12 New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey comes out publicly as a gay man.
Aug 13 156 Congolese Tutsi refugees massacred at the Gatumba refugee camp in Burundi.
Aug 13 Black Friday crackdown by NSS on a peaceful protest in the capital city of Maldives, Malé.
Aug 13 Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 storm, strikes Punta Gorda, Florida and devastates the surrounding area.
Aug 13 28th Olympic Games opens at Athens, Greece
Aug 15 Bay of Plenty defeat Auckland 33-26 in Rugby Union to win NZ’s Ranfurly shield for the first time in the shield’s 102 year history and after 28 unsuccessful challenges
Aug 15 86th PGA Championship: Vijay Singh shoots a 280 at Whistling Straits
Aug 17 MD5 collision found by Chinese researchers.
Aug 17 The National Assembly of Serbia unanimously adopts new state symbols for Serbia: Boze Pravde becomes the new anthem and the coat of arms is adopted for the whole country.
Event of interestEvent of Interest

Aug 22 “The Scream” (1910 painted version) and “Madonna”, two paintings by Edvard Munch, are stolen at gunpoint from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway.

Painter and Print Maker Edvard Munch
Painter and Print Maker
Edvard Munch
Aug 24 89 passengers die after two airliners explode after flying out of Domodedovo International Airport, near Moscow. The explosions were caused by suicide bombers (reportedly female) from the Russian Republic of Chechnya.
Music awardsMusic Awards

January–February
January 1
The Vienna New Year’s Concert is conducted by Riccardo Muti.
Kurt Nilsen wins World Idol.
January 3 – Britney Spears marries Jason Allen Alexander, a childhood friend, in Las Vegas. The marriage is annulled 55 hours later.
January 15 – Rapper Mystikal is sentenced to six years in prison for sexual battery.
February 1
Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake perform onstage at Super Bowl XXXVIII. The performance concludes with Jackson’s right breast being exposed to the audience. The phrase “wardrobe malfunction” is coined during the ensuing controversy.
Daron Hagen is appointed President of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation in New York City.
February 8 – The 46th Annual Grammy Awards are held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below becomes the first rap album to win Album of the Year. Beyoncé won five awards.
February 9 – Blink-182 release single “I Miss You” from the album Blink-182. The song reached number one on the Billboard Modern Rock chart.
February 10 – Paulina Rubio releases her seventh studio “Pau-Latina” under Universal Music Mexico. The album charted at #1 on the Billboard Latin Pop Albums and at #105 on the Billboard 200. The album also got certified 2× Platinum (Latin) by the RIAA.
February 13 – Elton John begins The Red Piano concert residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Originally scheduled for 75 performances, it would run for 248 shows over five years, including twenty-four tour dates in Europe.
February 17
BRIT Awards held in London. The Darkness, Dido, Busted, Justin Timberlake and KRS-One are among the winners.
Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan posts a bitter message on his personal blog calling D’arcy Wretzky a “mean spirited drug addict” and blaming James Iha for the breakup of the band.
March–April
March 2 – Britney Spears embarked The Onyx Hotel Tour, her first tour in 2 years to support her fourth studio album, In The Zone.
March 9 – Westlife member Brian McFadden leaves the band.
March 10 – George Michael announces that Patience will be his last commercially released record. Future releases will be available from his web site in return for donations to his favourite charities.
March 13 – Luciano Pavarotti gives his last performance in an opera, in Tosca at the New York Metropolitan Opera.
March 23 – Usher releases his Confessions album selling 1.1 million copies its first week, making him the first R&B artist to ever accomplish that. The album would be the top seller of the year with four number one singles.
April 6
A previously unreleased Johnny Cash album called My Mother’s Hymn Book is released less than a year after his death on September 12, 2003.
Modest Mouse, an American indie rock band releases Good News for People Who Love Bad News.
April 20 – Fear Factory returns after their 2002 breakup with the new album Archetype.
April 26
Deborah Voigt, sacked by Covent Garden for being too fat for an opera role, makes her recital debut to a rapturous reception at Carnegie Hall.
Dream Theater performs at the Nippon Budokan Hall in Tokyo, Japan.
May–June
May 10
Blender magazine’s May issue includes a “50 Worst Songs Ever!” list. “We Built This City,” by Starship, is rated worst.
Peter Tägtgren replaces Mikael Åkerfeldt In Bloodbath.
Keane release Hopes and Fears which becomes the 16th best selling album of the millennium in the UK. It went 8x platinum and was nominated for the Mercury Prize and the BRIT award for best album.
May 18-23 – The European Festival of Youth Choirs (EJCF) is held in Basel.
May 24 – Madonna starts The Re-Invention Tour in 20 cities with a total of 56 shows and making it the most successful concert tour of the year with a gross of $124.5 million.
May 25
Phish announces that after 21 years they will break up following the Summer 2004 Tour.
Skinny Puppy releases their first studio album since disbanding in 1996, called The Greater Wrong of the Right.
May 26 – Fantasia Barrino wins the third season of American Idol, defeating Diana DeGarmo.
May 28-June 6 – The Rock in Rio concert festival is staged in Lisbon, Portugal under the name Rock in Rio Lisboa. Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, Foo Fighters, Metallica, Britney Spears and Sting headline each of the six days.
June 4
Karl Jenkins signs a 10-year recording deal with EMI.
Creed dissolved. Guitarist Mark Tremonti, Drummer Scott Phillips and Brian Marshall (ex Bassist of Creed) were working on side project Alter Bridge along with Myles Kennedy of The Mayfield Four Their first album is One Day Remains, which was scheduled to be released on August 10.
June 10 – Ray Charles dies at the age of 73 from acute liver disease.
June 11 – The Van Halen Summer Tour 2004 kicks off in Greensboro, North Carolina, marking the return of Sammy Hagar on vocals for the first time since his acrimonious departure from the band in 1996.
June 12 – The Los Angeles, California radio station KROQ-FM airs the 12th Annual KROQ Weenie Roast show with Bad Religion, Beastie Boys, Cypress Hill, The Hives, Hoobastank, The Killers, Modest Mouse, New Found Glory, Story of the Year, The Strokes, The Velvet Revolver, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Yellowcard.
June 22 – 14th annual Lollapalooza festival, scheduled for July 17, is cancelled. Organizers cite “poor ticket sales”. (See: Lollapalooza 2004 lineup.)
June 23 – UK DJ Tony Blackburn is suspended by radio station Classic Gold Digital for playing songs by Cliff Richard, against station policy.
June 25 – Eric Clapton sells his famous guitar “Blackie” at a Christie’s auction, raising $959,000 to benefit the Crossroads drug rehabilitation center that he founded in 1998.
July–August
July 10 – Ex-S Club star Rachel Stevens sets a world record for completing the fastest promotional circuit in just 24 hours- including a run for the charity Sport Relief. American Idol winner Fantasia becomes the first artist in history to debut at number-one on the Hot 100 with a first record.
July 11 – McFly debut at #1 on the UK album charts with Room On The 3rd Floor. They break the record set by The Beatles as the youngest group ever to debut at #1 on the album charts.
July 20 – Van Halen releases The Best of Both Worlds, a 36-song compilation album featuring three new recordings with Sammy Hagar on vocals.
July 24 – The Robert Smith organized Curiosa Festival kicks off with a concert in West Palm Beach, Florida. Performing along with The Cure are Interpol, The Rapture, Mogwai, Cursive, Muse, Head Automatica, Thursday, Scarling., The Cooper Temple Clause, and Melissa Auf der Maur.
July 25 – The Doobie Brothers record and perform Live at Wolf Trap at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Virginia. The live album was released two months later, on October 26.
July 31
Simon & Garfunkel perform a free concert in front of the Colosseum in Rome for an audience of 600,000 people.
Dispatch performs their last live show at the DCR Hatchshell in Boston, Massachusetts.
August 8 – Dave Matthews Band’s tour bus dumps 800 lb (360 kg) of human feces from a Chicago bridge, intending to unload it in the river, but it lands on an architecture tour boat. The bus driver and the band are sued by the state of Illinois.
August 15 – Phish performs their final concert at a two-day festival in Coventry, Vermont.
August 23 – The Prodigy release their much anticipated and postponed first full-length album Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned in 7 years since 1997’s The Fat Of The Land.
September–October
September 18 – Britney Spears marries Kevin Federline.
September 26 – Avril Lavigne begins her Bonez Tour.
September 28 – Brian Wilson releases Brian Wilson Presents Smile, an interpretation of the Smile sessions which were shelved in 1967.
October – Jazz at Lincoln Center performance venue opens in New York City.
October 2 – Billy Joel marries for the third time, to the food critic and chef Katie Lee.
October 11
The original lineup of Duran Duran release their new album Astronaut, which is preceded by the single “(Reach Up For The) Sunrise”.
Melissa Etheridge undergoes surgery for breast cancer.
October 23 – Ashlee Simpson is accused of lip synching after an abortive live performance on the television show Saturday Night Live.
October 25 – Indian singer Hariharan is awarded the Swaralaya Kairali Yesudas Award for his outstanding contribution to Indian film music.
November–December
November 4 – Three members of the band RAM, who all lived in a neighborhood known for its support of the recently deposed former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, are detained by Haitian police during a concert performance in Port-au-Prince; no charges are ever filed or official explanation for the detentions given.
November 9 – Britney Spears releases her first compilation album titled Greatest Hits: My Prerogative.
November 11 – Eric Clapton receives a CBE at Buckingham Palace.
November 12 – Eminem’s fourth major studio album, Encore is released four days before schedule to combat Internet bootleggers. The album sells 710,000 copies in only three days and becomes Eminem’s third consecutive album to debut at #1 on the Billboard charts.
November 16 – Destiny’s Child released their fourth and final studio album Destiny Fulfilled by Columbia Records in North America.
November 17 – Within Temptation release the single “Stand My Ground”.
November 24 – Brian & Eric Hoffman leave Deicide after a royalties dispute.
November 30 – Jay-Z and Linkin Park’s album “Collision Course” debuts at number #01 in the Billboard 200, later becoming the best-selling CD/DVD of that year.
December 7 – Lindsay Lohan releases her début album, Speak.
December 8 – Dimebag Darrell is murdered on stage while performing in Columbus, Ohio, by a deranged fan,[4][5] who shoots the guitarist three times in the head with a 9mm Beretta handgun.[6] The gunman kills three other people and wounds a further seven before being shot dead by police.
December 11–12 – The Los Angeles, California radio station KROQ-FM airs the 15th Annual of the Acoustic Christmas with Chevelle, Franz Ferdinand, Good Charlotte, Green Day, Hoobastank, Incubus, Interpol, Jimmy Eat World, Keane, The Killers, Modest Mouse, Muse, The Music, My Chemical Romance, Papa Roach, Snow Patrol, Social Distortion, Sum 41, Taking Back Sunday, The Shins, The Used, and Velvet Revolver.
December 14 – Clint Lowery leaves Sevendust due to fights with band about gaining control of the band and doubts of the band’s future after being released from their label TVT Records.

What Happened in 1939 including Pop Culture, Significant Events …
1939 Prices including Wages, Houses and Gas, Events include Germany and the Soviet Union invade Poland, World War II Begins, Spanish Civil War ends …
www.thepeoplehistory.com/1939.html
What Happened in the 1930s featuring News, Popular Culture …
In 1930 the average cost of new car was $640.00 and by 1939 was $700.00 More A few more prices from the 30’s and how much things cost. Firestone Tyre …
www.thepeoplehistory.com/1930s.html

What Happened on September 1st This Day in History
Poland 1939 Poland Germany Invades 1st Sept. 1939 : German troops invade Poland by sending in 1.5 million troops at the same time the German Luftwaffe …
www.thepeoplehistory.com/september1st.html
What Happened on April 30th This Day in History
For Those With Birthdays 30th April looking for specific year these years are Included on this date 1789, 1921, 1932, 1939, 1940, 1943, 1945, 1948, 1951, 1952, …
www.thepeoplehistory.com/april30th.html

1930’s Homes and House Prices
The following are some of the criteria for selling or buying a home in the year 1939: Sleeping rooms were to be designed to provide considerable amount of …
www.thepeoplehistory.com/30s-homes.html

Classic Car models and prices for cars from the Thirties
Cadillac 1939. Price $1345. V8 Engine The new Cadillac 61 the value sensation of the century for hundreds of dollars less. Cadillac 1935 Passenger Sedan

Feb 9 52nd NBA All-Star Game: West beats East 155-145 (2 OT) at Atlanta
Feb 10 France and Belgium break the NATO procedure of silent approval concerning the timing of protective measures for Turkey in case of a possible war with Iraq.
Feb 15 An estimated 6-11 million people around the world take to the streets to protest against war with Iraq
Feb 16 45th Daytona 500: Michael Waltrip wins (133.87 MPH)
Feb 17 The London Congestion Charge scheme begins.
Feb 18 Comet C/2002 V1 (NEAT) makes perihelion, seen by SOHO.
Feb 18 Nearly 200 people die in the Daegu subway fire in South Korea.
Feb 20 During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the club ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 300 others.
Appears on tv showTelevision Debut

Feb 21 Bill Maher’s political talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher” debuts on HBO

Political Commentator and Comedian Bill Maher
Political Commentator and Comedian
Bill Maher
Music awardsMusic Awards

Feb 23 45th Grammy Awards: Don’t Know Why, Norah Jones wins

Singer & Pianist Norah Jones
Singer & Pianist
Norah Jones
Feb 23 49th National Film Awards (India): “Dweepa” wins the Golden Lotus
Feb 23 56th British Film and Television Awards (BAFTAS): “The Pianist” Best Film, Roman Polanski Best Director
Feb 27 Former Bosnian Serb leader Biljana Plavsic is sentenced by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, to 11 years in prison
Feb 27 Rowan Williams is enthroned as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.
Mar 1 Management of the United States Customs Service and the United States Secret Service move to the United States Department of Homeland Security.
Music awardsMusic Awards

Actor and Rapper LL Cool J
Actor and Rapper
LL Cool J
Singer Mariah Carey
Singer
Mariah Carey
Mar 2 The first International Symposium on Taiwan Sign Language Linguistics is held at Chung Cheng University.
Mar 2 America’s Cup: Alinghi defeats Team New Zealand 5-0 to win in Auckland
Mar 5 In Haifa, 17 Israeli civilians are killed by a Hamas suicide bomb in the Haifa bus 37 massacre.
Mar 8 34th NAACP Image Awards: “Antwone Fisher” wins Outstanding Motion Picture
Mar 11 The International Criminal Court holds its inaugural session in The Hague.
Mar 12 Zoran Đinđić, Prime Minister of Serbia, is assassinated in Belgrade.
Mar 12 Elizabeth Smart, was found after having been missing for 9 months.
Mar 13 The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy
Mar 14 Start of weekend of protests against war in Iraq that are attended by millions
Event of interestEvent of Interest

Mar 15 Hu Jintao becomes President of the People’s Republic of China

Paramount Leader of China Hu Jintao
Paramount Leader of China
Hu Jintao
Mar 15 24th Big East Men’s Basketball Tournament: Pittsburgh beats Connecticut, 74-56
Mar 16 The largest coordinated worldwide vigil takes place, as part of the global protests against Iraq war.
Mar 16 50th ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament: #12 Duke beats NC State, 84-77
Mar 16 44th SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament: Kentucky beats Mississippi State, 64-57
Mar 17 British Cabinet Minister Robin Cook, resigns over government plans for the war with Iraq.
Mar 18 FBI agents raid the corporate headquarters of HealthSouth Corporation in Birmingham, Alabama on suspicion of massive corporate fraud led by the company’s top executives.
Mar 18 British Sign Language is recognised as an official British language.
Mar 19 Invasion of Iraq by American and British led coalition begins without United Nations support and in defiance of world opinion
Mar 22 23rd Golden Raspberry Awards: Swept Away wins
Mar 23 In Nasiriyah, Iraq, 11 soldiers of the 507th Maintenance Company as well as 18 U.S. Marines are killed during the first major conflict of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Film tv awardsFilm Awards

NHL Goalie and Coach Patrick Roy
NHL Goalie and Coach
Patrick Roy
Apr 23 Beijing closes all schools for two weeks because of the SARS virus.
Apr 26 2003 NFL Draft: Carson Palmer from USC first pick by Cincinnati Bengals
Apr 28 Andre Agassi recaptures the world no. 1 ranking to become the oldest top-ranked male in the history of the ATP rankings (33 years, 13 days)
Event of interestEvent of Interest

May 1 2003 invasion of Iraq: In what becomes known as the “Mission Accomplished” speech, U.S. President George W. Bush declares that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” on board the USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of California.

43rd US President George W. Bush
43rd US President
George W. Bush
May 3 New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapses.
May 3 129th Kentucky Derby: Jose Santos aboard Funny Cide wins in 2:01.19
May 10 The May 2003 tornado outbreak sequence takes place.
May 12 The Riyadh compound bombings, carried out by Al Qaeda, kill 26.
May 12 Fifty-nine Democratic lawmakers bring the Texas Legislature to a standstill by going into hiding in a dispute over a Republican congressional redistricting plan.
May 16 In Casablanca, Morocco, 33 civilians are killed and more than 100 people are injured in the Casablanca terrorist attacks.
May 16 NHL Western Conference Final: Anaheim Ducks beat Minnesota Wild, 4 games to 0
May 17 128th Preakness: Jose Santos aboard Funny Cide wins in 1:55.61
Appears on tv showTelevision Debut

May 20 The reality series “America’s Next Top Model”, created by Tyra Banks, debuts on UPN

Supwemodel & Actress Tyra Banks
Supwemodel & Actress
Tyra Banks
May 21 An earthquake hits northern Algeria killing more than 2,000 people.
May 21 38th Academy of Country Music Awards: Toby Keith, Martina McBride & Kenny Chesney win
May 22 In Fort Worth, Texas, Annika Sörenstam becomes the first woman to play the PGA Tour in 58 years.
May 23 The Euro exceeds its initial trading value as it hits $1.18 for the first time since its introduction in 1999.
May 23 NHL Eastern Conference Final: New Jersey Devils beat Ottawa Senators, 4 games to 3
May 24 48th Eurovision Song Contest: Sertab Erener for Turkey wins singing “Everyway That I Can” in Riga
May 25 Néstor Kirchner becomes President of Argentina after defeating Carlos Menem. He is the first elected President since the economic crisis.
May 25 Indianapolis 500: Gil de Ferran wins in 3:11:56.989 (251.526 km/h)
May 25 56th Cannes Film Festival: “Elephant” directed by Gus Van Sant wins the Palme d’Or
May 26 Only three days after a previous record, Sherpa Lakpa Gelu climbs Mount Everest in 10 hours 56 minutes. The tourism ministry of Nepal confirms this record in July that year.
May 28 Peter Hollingworth becomes the first Governor-General of Australia to resign his office as a result of criticism of his conduct.
May 28 Patrick Roy officially announces his retirement from the NHL
May 28 11th UEFA Champions League Final: Milan beats Juventus (0-0, 3-2 on penalties) at Manchester
Film release premierFilm Release

May 30 “Finding Nemo”, directed by Andrew Stanton and starring Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres is released in the US and Canada

Jun 17 Moneyball, a book about the 2003 Oakland Athletics baseball team and GM Billy Beane’s sabermetric approach, inspired by Bill James, is published

Baseball Writer and Statistician Bill James
Baseball Writer and Statistician
Bill James
Jun 18 Google launches AdSense, a program that enables website publishers to serve ads targeted to the specific content of their individual web pages, many of which like HistoryOrb.com go on to start their own publishing businesses
Event of interestEvent of Interest

Jun 21 “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” the 5th book of the series by J. K. Rowling is published worldwide in English

Jun 23 Barry Bonds steals second base against the Los Angeles Dodgers, becoming the first player in MLB history to have 500 career home runs and 500 career steals

MLB Legend Barry Bonds
MLB Legend
Barry Bonds
Jun 26 The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Lawrence v. Texas that gender-based sodomy laws are unconstitutional.
Jun 27 The United States National Do Not Call Registry, formed to combat unwanted telemarketing calls and administered by the Federal Trade Commission, enrolls almost three-quarters of a million phone numbers on its first day.
Film release premierFilm Premier

Tennis Champion Roger Federer
Tennis Champion
Roger Federer
Jul 7 The United Communist Party of Armenia is formed.
Jul 8 Sudan Airways Flight 39, with 116 people on board, crashes in Sudan; the only survivor is a two-year-old boy who subsequently dies as a result of his injuries.
Jul 10 A Neoplan bus, owned by Kowloon Motor Bus, collides with a truck, falls off a bridge on Tuen Mun Road, Hong Kong, and plunges into the underlying valley, killing 21 people. This is the deadliest traffic accident to date in Hong Kong.
Jul 15 AOL Time Warner disbands Netscape Communications Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation is established on the same day.
Jul 15 74th All Star Baseball Game: AL wins 7-6 at U.S. Cellular Field, Chicago
Sport awardSports Awards

Jul 16 11th ESPY Awards: Lance Armstrong, Serena Williams win

Professional Road Cyclist and Testicular Cancer Survivor Lance Armstrong
Professional Road Cyclist and Testicular Cancer Survivor
Lance Armstrong
Tennis Player Serena Williams
Tennis Player
Serena Williams
Jul 17 36th San Diego Comic-Con International opens at San Diego Convention Center
Jul 20 France: Sixteen people are injured after two bombs explode outside a tax office in Nice.
Jul 20 132nd British Golf Open: Ben Curtis shoots a 283 at Royal St George’s Golf Club
Jul 22 Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attack a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay, along with Mustapha Hussein, Qusay’s 14-year old son, and a bodyguard.
Event of interestEvent of Interest

Jul 27 A group of 321 Filipino armed soldiers called “Magdalo” took over the Oakwood Premier Ayala Center in Makati City to show the Filipino people the alleged corruption of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration

14th President of the Philippines Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
14th President of the Philippines
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
Jul 27 90th Tour de France: no winner (Lance Armstrong disqualified)
Jul 30 The last ‘old style’ Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line in Mexico
Aug 5 A car bomb explodes in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta outside the Marriott Hotel killing 12 and injuring 150.
Event of interestEvent of Interest

Aug 6 Cristiano Ronaldo makes his debut for Manchester United and the Premier League in a 4–0 home victory over Bolton Wanderers

Football Star Cristiano Ronaldo
Football Star
Cristiano Ronaldo
Aug 10 The highest temperature ever recorded in the UK – 38.5°C (101.3°F) in Kent . It is the first time the UK has recorded a temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Aug 11 Jemaah Islamiyah leader Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, is arrested in Bangkok, Thailand.
Aug 11 A heat wave in Paris results in temperatures rising to 112°F (44° C), leaving about 144 people dead.
Aug 11 NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year-history.
Aug 14 Widescale power blackout in the northeast United States and Canada.
Aug 16 U.S. Representative from South Dakota Bill Janklow hits and kills a motorcyclist with his car at a rural intersection near Trent, South Dakota; he will eventually be convicted of manslaughter and will resign from Congress.
Aug 17 85th PGA Championship: Shaun Micheel shoots a 276 at Oak Hill Country Club
Aug 19 A Hamas planned suicide attack on a bus in Jerusalem kills 23 Israelis, 7 of them children
Aug 19 A car-bomb attack on United Nations headquarters in Iraq kills the agency’s top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other employees.
Aug 22 Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is suspended after refusing to comply with a federal court order to remove a rock inscribed with the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court building.
Aug 23 9th World Championships in Athletics open at Saint-Denis, France
Aug 25 The Tli Cho land claims agreement is signed between the Dogrib First Nations and the Canadian federal government in Rae-Edzo (now called Behchoko).
Aug 26 The Columbia Accident Investigation Board releases its final reports on Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
Aug 27 Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing 34,646,418 miles (55,758,005 km) distant.
Aug 27 60th Venice Film Festival: “The Return” directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev wins Golden Lion
Aug 28 An electricity blackout cuts off power to around 500,000 people living in south east England and brings 60% of London’s underground rail network to a halt.
Music awardsMusic Awards

Tennis Player and U.S. Open Champion Andy Roddick
Tennis Player and U.S. Open Champion
Andy Roddick
Sep 7 123rd Women’s U.S. Open: Justine Henin-Hardenne beats Kim Clijsters (7-5, 6-1)
Sep 11 Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh dies after being assaulted and fatally wounded on September 10.
Sep 11 The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety enters into effect.
Sep 12 In Fallujah, US forces mistakenly shoot and kill eight Iraqi police officers.
Sep 12 The United Nations lifts sanctions against Libya after that country agreed to accept responsibility and recompense the families of victims in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
Sep 13 28th Toronto International Film Festival: “Zatoichi” directed by Takeshi Kitano wins the People’s Choice Award
Sep 14 Sweden rejects adopting the Euro in a referendum
Sep 14 Estonia approves joining the European Union in a referendum.
Sep 18 The United Kingdom’s Local Government Act 2003, repealing controversial Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, receives Royal Assent.
Sep 20 Maldives civil unrest: the death of prisoner Hassan Evan Naseem sparks a day of rioting in Malé
Sep 20 A referendum is held in Latvia to decide the country’s accession to the European Union
Sep 21 Galileo mission terminated by sending the probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere, where it is crushed by the pressure at the lower altitudes.
Film tv awardsTelevision Awards

Actor James Gandolfini
Actor
James Gandolfini
Sep 22 David Hempleman-Adams becomes the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an open-air, wicker-basket hot air balloon.
Sep 25 A magnitude-8.0 earthquake strikes just offshore of Hokkaidō, Japan.
Event of interestEvent of Interest

Oct 14 Fan Steve Bartman deflects the ball away from Chicago Cubs outfielder Moises Alou. Cubs give up eight runs in the inning and lose to the Marlins 8-3, and the Bartman incident is seen as the turning point in the series

January–February
January 6 – The annual Park Lane Group Young Artists festival of contemporary music opens with two concerts in the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre, London. The first concert, given by the Gallimaufry Ensemble, includes the premiere of a new wind quintet by 23-year-old Benjamin Wallfisch; the second concert features solo bass clarinettist Sarah Watts, who premieres Marc Yeats Vox for solo bass clarinet and Michael Smetanin’s Ladder of Escape for bass clarinet with prerecorded ensemble of six bass and two contrabass clarinets.
January 7 – Opening of the Philip on Film Live festival (until January 11) at the Barbican Centre, London, featuring films with music by Philip Glass performed live by the Philip Glass Ensemble, conducted by Michael Riesman.
January 9 – The Vienna Philharmonic belatedly announce that violist Ursula Plaichinger has become the first official female member of the orchestra, 158 years after their founding and six years after they have been forced to allow women to audition, under threat of having their state subsidies stopped. At the same time, it is disclosed that orchestra boss Clemens Hellsberg has formally banned Plaichinger from giving interviews to the press.
January 10
Andrew Lack, former chief of NBC news, is named the new head of Sony’s music division, to the surprise of the music industry, because he had no previous experience of the record industry. He replaced Tommy Mottola, who resigned the previous day amidst reports of friction with higher Sony executives over huge financial losses in the music division.
Following an investigation by The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and London detectives, police raids in the UK and the Netherlands recover 500 original Beatles studio tapes, recorded during the Let It Be sessions. Five people are arrested. The tapes have been used for bootleg releases for years.
January 13 – The Who guitarist Pete Townshend is arrested by British police on suspicion of possessing and making indecent images of children and of incitement to distribute them. Townshend claims in a statement that he did not download any such images and accessed Web sites advertising child pornography because he was researching material for his autobiography, which will include passages about his abusive childhood.
January 18
The Indian Air Force band, the Air Warriors, played a concert in the Homi Baba Auditorium in Colaba (Mumbai), which included Muthuswami Dikshitar’s Vathapiganapathi in a version combining military band with traditional Carnatic instruments.
A two-day festival of the music of Mark-Anthony Turnage is given at the Barbican Centre, London, with three world premieres and chamber concerts by the Nash Ensemble and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
January 22 – Nikolaus Harnoncourt cancels a European tour after being ordered by his doctors to take a two-month rest.
February 3
Police respond to a 911 phone call from one of Phil Spector’s neighbors and discover the body of actress Lana Clarkson, with a gunshot wound, at Spector’s his home in Alhambra, California. Spector is arrested on suspicion of murder.”
The Martin Bashir television film Living with Michael Jackson premieres on ITV in the UK. It airs on ABC in the US three days later. A total of 53 million viewers in the two countries watch the special.
February 8 – Avril Lavigne scores her third #1 single “I’m with You”, making her the second artist in history to have three consecutive #1 songs from a début album in the Billboard Mainstream Top 40.
February 20 – The Station nightclub fire: Fire engulfs a Rhode Island nightclub during a fireworks display which was part of the performance by rock band Great White. The fire quickly spreads across the ceiling, filling the building with thick, black smoke, killing 100 people and injuring 160 others as audience members rush for the exits. Many people are missing for some time, including Great White guitarist Ty Longley, who is later confirmed to be dead.
February 23 – New York City is the site of The 45th Annual Grammy Awards, featuring Nickelback, No Doubt, Foo Fighters, Beyoncé and other performers.
February 24 – Robert Trujillo joins Metallica.
March–April
March 3 – Avril Lavigne kicks off her first headlining tour the “Try To Shut Me Up Tour”.
March 10
Johnny Cash is admitted to Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee to undergo treatment for pneumonia.
The Dixie Chicks unleash a firestorm of controversy at a concert in London when lead singer Natalie Maines announces to the audience that “just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas”. The group is dropped from radio playlists all over the United States and receives death threats as a result.
March 21 – Ex-Neighbours star Delta Goodrem releases her debut album Innocent Eyes which became Australia’s monster smash hit of 2003 and included the releases of the new singles “Born to Try” and “Lost Without You”.
March 24 – Meteora by Linkin Park debuts at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart.
March 25 – Céline Dion begins A New Day…, her Las Vegas residency show. It would run for almost five years and over 700 shows.
April 1 – Dozens of fans walk out during a Pearl Jam concert when lead singer Eddie Vedder makes comments opposing the Iraq war and insulting remarks about U.S. President George W. Bush. Other audience members boo and shout at Vedder telling him to “shut up.” Vedder attempts to calm the crowd by adding “just to clarify… we support the troops.”
April 8 – Godsmack releases their third studio album Faceless.
April 16 – Luther Vandross suffers a severe stroke at his home in New York City. He emerges from a coma six weeks later.
April 21 – S Club announce live on stage at London’s Docklands Arena that they’ve decided to split up after five years together. Their final single, “Say Goodbye”, enters the chart at #2 a month after the announcement. Rachel Stevens from the group launched her successful solo career shortly afterwards with the song “Sweet Dreams My LA Ex”.
April 28 – Apple Inc. opens the iTunes Music Store, offering 200,000 songs for download at a cost of 99 cents each. More than 1 million songs are sold in the store’s first week.
May–June
May 7 – Pete Townshend is cleared of the charges stemming from his arrest in January on suspicion of possessing child pornography, but is formally cautioned and placed on the sex offenders register for five years.
May 19 – The former TV channel MuchMusic USA relaunches as Fuse.
May 21 – Ruben Studdard wins the second season of American Idol, edging Clay Aiken.
May 24
Turkish singer Sertab Erener wins the Eurovision Song Contest, held in Riga, Latvia, with the song “Everyway That I Can”. It is the last time that the contest is a one-night event.
After a 40-year wait, Russian fans of The Beatles finally get to see former Beatle Paul McCartney perform on their soil, on the Red Square in Moscow.
June 14
Alexander Kuoppala quit Children of Bodom.
David Del Tredici’s Wondrous the Merge for string quartet and narrator, based on a homoerotic poem by James Broughton, makes its controversial debut at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival.
Henry Ranta quits Soilwork.
Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera kicked off their summer Justified & Stripped Tour.
Los Angeles, California radio station KROQ-FM airs the 11th Annual of the Weenie Roast show with AFI, The Ataris, Blur, Chevelle, Deftones, Finch, Foo Fighters, Godsmack, Good Charlotte, Hot Hot Heat, Interpol, Jane’s Addiction, Less Than Jake, Liam Lynch, Staind, Sum 41, Thrice, The Transplants, The Used, The White Stripes and Pete Yorn.
Alice Cooper begins production of his 26th album. It is a departure from the heavy metal sound of previous albums and is more influenced by his albums of the 1970s.
June 22
Beyoncé releases her No.1 debut solo album “Dangerously in Love”, which would earn her 5 Grammys in a single night. It also spawned two No.1 singles in the US and has sold 11 million copies to date.
Nick Oshiro replaces Ken Jay in Static-X.
June 27–29 – In the Glastonbury Festival, U.K., headline acts included David Gray, R.E.M., Primal Scream, Morcheeba, The Flaming Lips, Radiohead, Super Furry Animals, Lamb, Macy Gray, Feeder, Manic Street Preachers, Moby and Doves. The weather is mostly dry and the festival deemed a success from both a security and entertainment viewpoint by Michael Eavis.
July–August
July 2
A-Teens and many others perform at the Stockholm Pride festival.
Delta Goodrem is diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease.
July 5 – Lollapalooza returns after a six-year absence from the music festival circuit. Jane’s Addiction, Audioslave, Incubus and Queens of the Stone Age are among the featured acts.
July 11 – Judas Priest announces that Rob Halford has rejoined the band, with a reunion tour to follow in 2004.
July 14 – The eurodance and alternative rock musician Lynda Thomas made her last public appearance; she suddenly left the music industry and public life altogether.
July 20 – An auto accident in Oregon kills three of the four members of The Exploding Hearts, ending the band after just one album.
July 30 – The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Rush, The Guess Who and others headline a benefit concert in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to prove that the city is safe from SARS. With 450 000 spectators, it is the largest concert in Canadian history.
August 19 – Jessica Simpson releases her third studio album In This Skin. The album would later go triple platinum in the U.S. and would produce the hit single “With You”.
August 28 – Madonna sparks media controversy by kissing popstars Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards. The situation even ignited a quick war of words between Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera over the kiss.
September–October
September 15 – Billy Corgan announces that Zwan has broken up.
September 16 – Ryan Malcolm wins the first season of Canadian Idol.
September 22 – Max Cavalera & Gloria Cavalera fire Marcello D. Rapp causing Roy Mayorga & Mike Doling to leave the band Soulfly in protest.
September 23 – Limp Bizkit release Results May Vary their first album in 3 years and their 4th album overall.
October – Indie/Rock band Conway wins the National “Battle of the Bands” Competition at the Fountain Pub in Tottenham, London, UK[citation needed]. The Norfolk, UK, band consists of Chris Burgoyne (vocals), Andrew Norman (lead guitar / vocals), Tristan McKelvey (guitar), Leon Chapman (bass) and Peter Rednall (drums).
October 4 – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s The Rising Tour concludes after 120 shows over 14 months, with record-setting sales in U.S. stadiums during the summer and early autumn.
October 15 – A two-week-long international conference, “Fuori tempo, dire, fare, sentire la musica oggi”, opens in Genoa, Italy, bringing together performers, composers, scholars and administrators from classical, folk and popular music, with a keynote address by Charles Rosen. Featured participants include Nuria Schoenberg (daughter of Arnold Schoenberg and widow of Luigi Nono); musicologist James Harrison; opera conductor Roberto Abbado; violinist Ivry Gitlis; composers Salvatore Sciarrino, Lorenzo Ferrero and Andrea Liberovici; poet Edoardo Sanguineti; popular singer-songwriters Teresa De Sio, Gianna Nannini and Gino Paoli; rock and jazz artists Peppe Servalo and Peppe D’Argenzio of the Piccola Orchestra Avion Travel; and administrators Anna Cammarano (director of classical music at RAI Trade), Gennaro di Benedetto (superintendent of the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa) and Joseph Hussek (director of the artistic programme at the Salzburg Festival).
October 16 – Simon & Garfunkel begin their “Old Friends” U.S. reunion tour, twenty years after their 1983 world tour.
October 20 – Britney Spears releases the first single, “Me Against The Music”, featuring American singer-songwriter Madonna, from her upcoming album In the Zone, marketed as a comeback single in the US; it goes on to be an international success, reaching the top three in several countries.
October 21 – Delta Goodrem wins 7 ARIA Awards and defeats Amiel’s “Lovesong” for and a Gold ARIA for Single of the Year, Born to Try. ARIAs host Rove McManus announced that John Farnham will raise the very loud speakers to 1985/1986’s “You’re the Voice” after being inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.
October 29 – A legal version of the Napster file sharing network relaunches as a pay service, offering song downloads for 99 cents apiece or $9.99 for unlimited listening.
November–December
November 4 – Aaron Carter releases his first compilation album (fifth overall album under Jive Records) Most Requested Hits
November 5
Cryptopsy rehires Lord Worm.
Evanescence’s lead guitarist and founding member Ben Moody leaves the band on their first world tour.
November 6 – Marco Aro quits his vocalist position in The Haunted. The band rehires their first vocalist, Peter Dolving.
November 7 – Steve Kmak, aka “Fuzz,” is fired from Disturbed as a result of personality clashes with others in the band.
November 14
The legal incarnation of the band Pink Floyd reunites to perform at the funeral of their manager Steve O’Rourke.
Byron Stroud is confirmed as an official member of Fear Factory.
November 18
Blink-182 release their fifth studio album blink-182. This album was regarded as a change of musical style for Blink-182 as the music has darkened and matured since their previous albums.
Britney Spears releases In the Zone. She breaks her own record as the first female artist to have 3 albums in #1 to become the first female artist to have 4 albums in #1 consecutively.
Michael Jackson releases the compilation album Number Ones.
November 19 – Guy Sebastian becomes the first winner of Australian Idol, receiving a contract with BMG Australia. He subsequently records the studio album, Just As I Am.
November 20 – Michael Jackson is arrested on charges of child molestation. The singer faced similar charges in 1993 that were dropped after an out-of-court financial settlement was reached with the family of a boy. In light of the new accusations, the television network CBS chooses to pull the scheduled November 26 airing of a one-hour television special intended to promote Jackson’s new greatest hits album, Number Ones.
November 21 – Korn release their sixth studio album, Take a Look in the Mirror. It is the last album that features the original lineup of Korn.
November 22 – The band Five Iron Frenzy plays its last show at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver.
December 6
Elvis Costello and Diana Krall are married in a private ceremony at Elton John’s estate in England.
P-Funk founder George Clinton is arrested and charged with drug possession in Tallahassee, Florida.
December 8 – Ozzy Osbourne is rushed into emergency surgery after having a serious accident riding an all-terrain vehicle on the grounds of his English estate. Osbourne broke his collarbone, eight ribs and a vertebra in his neck.
December 12 – Mick Jagger is knighted for services to music by The Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace.
December 13-14 – The Los Angeles, California radio station KROQ-FM airs the 14th Annual of the Acoustic Christmas show with AFI, Blink-182, Brand New, Chevelle, The Distillers, Jane’s Addiction, Jet, KoЯn, Linkin Park, The Offspring, P.O.D., Pennywise, Puddle of Mudd, Rancid, Staind, 311, Thrice and Trapt.
December 30-31 – The New Year’s Eve Falls Festival in Australia, traditionally held in Lorne, Victoria, holds events in both Lorne and Marion Bay, Tasmania, at the same time. The same artists perform at both events, alternating between the two venues each night.